IN UMBRĀ ARTIFICIS ĀTRĪ
by Buizel Rubeda
Summary: Latin Title Translation: "In the Shadow of the Dark Master." This short story details Spyro and Cynder's passage through the Burned Lands and the Floating Islands on their way to confront the Dark Master once and for all. It focuses on the horror and immensity of these last moments, as well as on the relationship between Spyro and Cynder.
1. Preface

**Preface**

Okay, so I know we're not supposed to upload "author's notes" as discrete chapters, but it's distracting to put it all in Chapter 1, so I won't.

This is a three-part one-shot that describes Spyro and Cynder's journey through the Burned Lands and Floating Islands to go face Malefor once and for all. Yes, I did take quite a bit of artistic license in this (in even inventing this journey in the first place), but the whole point is to elaborate on the bond between them, as well as to enhance the horror and suspense and tragedy of what they would have endured, since a kid's game can't really be that...morbid.

One note: The title of the story, as well as each of the three chapters (the last two are in progress), is in Latin, and each chapter is prefaced by a little Latin paragraph. Sorry, I waxed poetic, but I thought it added a dramatic touch. You don't have to read it if you don't want to, and I'm sure I committed some solecisms, so forgive me! Specifically regarding the title, it was originally "In the Shadow of the Burned Lands," but given how it all turned out, I've changed it to "In the Shadow of the Dark Master," which seems more appropriate.

Hope you enjoy.

_P.S.:_ Going back through, I added a little bit of translation to appropriate bits of Latin. Some of its not necessarily pertinent to the story - I just added it for a dramatic/poetic effect. I did translate the chapter titles, though.

_P.P.S:_ The Latin paragraph that introduces chapter 4 is, up till the line "SED..." derived from selected verses of the Gregorian chant, "DIĒS ĪRAE."


	2. in profundum

**_IN UMBRĀ ARTIFICIS ĀTRĪ_**

"_in profundum_"

"Into the Abyss"

* * *

CUM ADVENTŪ DĒLĒTŌRIS VENIENT ĪGNIS MORSQUE; CAELUM OBSCŪRĀBITUR, ET TŌTA TERRA CUM ĪGNE FERŌCE IŪSTITIAE IŪDICIĪQUE AMBŪRĒBITUR; ĪNFERĪ EX TENEBRĪS SEPULCRŌQUE ET AD TERRAM SURGENT ET ORBIS ILLŌRUM RELIQUŌRUM VĪVŌRUMQUE DĒVORĀBUNT. SŌLUM ILLĪ QUĪ BENEDĪCTIŌNEM DĪVĪNAM POSSIDENT IŪDICIUM AB ĀLĪS FĀTĪ FUGIENT.

GLŌRIŌSĪ SUBLĪMĒSQUE AD ALTISSIMA CAELA ĒVOLĀBUNT…INVOLŪTĪ CUM PLŪMĪS PĀCIS GAUDIĪQUE.

* * *

_(AUTHOR'S NOTE: For details concerning the timing of these events, consult the summary of "Chapter 1" of my story, _Thunderclap_. This tripartite one-shot is designed to convey the horror of the beginning of the final moments leading up to the battle between Spyro and Cynder and Malefor.)_

* * *

On top of everything, Spyro was getting worried: He and Cynder (and Ignitus, but that thought stung) had entered the Burned Lands, that expanse of scorched land that lay between Warfang and the Dragon Temple, an hour or two shy of midday, and Spyro judged that they had to be nearing sunset by this point, and they _still_ had yet to come across any sort of shelter:

All that lay before was a cavernous expanse of horrible, blackened earth, rising occasionally in ridges and walls, riddled with fumaroles spouting steam and the occasional splash of lava, which lay, moreover, in hellish, scarlet ribbons, bubbling and hissing as it slithered its way along the ground.

The sky was a terrible expanse of smoky gray that Spyro swore had darkened several degrees since they had begun their trek; it was occasionally interspersed by flashes of heat lightning and plumes of sparks eructed by angry volcanos.

The air was torrid and absolutely void of moisture, coarse with ash and dust, stirred periodically by abrupt gusts of volcanic wind, laden with heat and burnt detritus from who knew what. Spyro would be amazed if he didn't contract emphysema from this miasmic atmosphere — assuming he lived… (_Don't go there_, he thought grimly.)

But the worst part of it all was the silence: Aside from the burbling lava, the eerie whine of the wind, the whooshes of geysers, the hiss of fumaroles, and the tapping of his and Cynder's paws on the charred earth — aside from those faint, miscellaneous noises, the Burned Lands were pervaded by a heavy, deathly silence, itself pervaded by a sort of echoic quality, as though the millions of beings that had inhabited these lands had cried out in uniform horror…and then had been abruptly and cruelly silenced.

Spyro shivered – despite the heat – as that thought coursed through him.

"What's up?" Cynder asked him; she was walking along behind him and had evidently seen his shiver.

"Nothing," he mumbled, incapable of and unwilling to describe the thoughts that plagued him.

"It's not Ignitus, is it?" asked Cynder with a mixture of tenderness and apprehension, as though she feared that he would take on his Dark form again at the mere mention of his mentor's – former mentor's – name. Spyro sighed and shook his head.

"No…no, it's not him…"

"What is it, then?" Cynder persisted, coming abreast him. Spyro averted his gaze, unable to meet hers. What was he to say? How could he tell her?

From the Chronicler he had learnt to manipulate time and space – to a degree – and that had spilt over into his senses, such that, if he concentrated very hard, he could perceive events occurring at great distances: He could see or hear – even smell, touch, or taste – things from miles away…when he concentrated.

But here, the destruction, the death, the horror, were so powerful, so pervasive, so incisive, that his senses were almost overloaded, bombarded with stimuli: He could literally hear the Earth's death cry ringing in his ears, taste the blood as it was seared by the Destroyer's passage, see the light of life snuffed out in the glare of the holocaustic flames.

How could he explain that to her? Where could he begin? It was too horrible to express… But he had to tell her something.

Just as he opened his mouth, though, a bloodcurdling, impish cry rent the air, and Spyro felt a weight land on his back, just behind the shoulders, forcing him to the ground.

Instinctively, he rolled, crushing whatever had attacked him beneath his body; springing to his feet, he saw a dazed Grublin rising unsteadily to its feet. Cynder stood a few paces away, teeth bared a pair of the insectile creatures.

The Grublin that had attacked him managed to regain its composure; it lifted a few feet into the air on its transparent wings, hurling itself towards him, a little, crude club brandished in its right fist…

Spyro opened his mouth and spat a jet of fire that consumed the evil little beast; awash with red light and heat, the Grublin yowled as it crashed into the ground at Spyro's paws; he leaped over it and raced over to Cynder, who, in the short interim, had been engaged by three more Grublins.

Spyro seized the nearest one in his claws, wrenching hard enough to snap its flimsy spine; he shot a fireball towards a second, and, not waiting to see if his attack had connected, pounced upon a third, slitting its throat with his claws.

Flicking dark, viscous blood from his claws, Spyro looked up and saw Cynder, encased in shadows, running in impossibly fast circles around a pair of Grublins; she disengaged and dropped her shadowy cloak; the wisps of darkness dissipated, revealing the Grublins inert on the ground, not breathing, little feathers of shadow rising almost lazily from their half-open mouths.

Before the two dragons could say anything, they heard a crackling sound and turned to spot another half dozen of the beasts flying towards them. Spyro opened his mouth for a third time and spat bolts of deadly sharp bolts of ice: Several connected, and two Grublins were grounded by the fusillade. Cynder spewed a generous amount of acid on another two, and Spyro leaped forward to deal with the last pair:

Ducking a swipe from one's club, he gored it through the abdomen, trusting to the helmet on his head to protect him from its retaliatory blow, and snaked his tail up to slit the second's throat, knocking it from the air. Spyro flung the dead Grublin from his horn, feeling its blood oozing down the side of his head, flicking globs of the foul liquid from his tail.

Then he heard Cynder yelp: Whirling around, he saw her trying to fling off three Grublins that had appeared from nowhere and were now clinging to her body, gnashing their tiny, needlelike teeth.

"Cynder, hold still!" Spyro cried to her, racing forward. She obeyed, and Spyro took a deep breath, exhaling a river of frigid air, sending the Grublins spinning through the air. Cynder spun immediately and doused them in acid. Their death cries faded into the miasmic air, and the two dragons were left alone with the scattering of bodies.

Spyro approached Cynder: She was breathing deeply, and blood was trickling down her left shoulder.

"Are you all right?" Spyro asked her quietly, coming up to examine the wound.

"Fine!" she said furiously, "I shouldn't have let them get that close! Stupid, stupid, stupid — !"

"Let me look at that," Spyro insisted, peering at the cut on her shoulder. She skittered away.

"It's fine, _I'm_ fine…"

"C'mon, Cynder," Spyro said gravely, "Now's not the time." The solemnity of his voice apparently convinced her: She stood still and let him look.

The cut, Spyro noticed with a barely restrained sigh of relief, was very shallow, nothing more than a break of the skin, really; it probably didn't even sting that much.

"It doesn't look serious," he understated, "All the same…" He reached up with his paw and carefully wiped away the blood, revealing the little nick, upon which he blew a gentle stream of frosty air. Cynder let him doctor her, which only a few days ago might have repulsed her.

"You're hurt, too," Cynder noticed when he'd finished, in a completely inscrutable tone. She pointed at the Grublin blood; Spyro shook his head.

"Not mine," Spyro mumbled. They stood there for a few uncomfortable moments, listening to the hiss of the lava. "C'mon," said Spyro in a thick, distant voice, "Let's keep going."

They set off, continuing their journey northeastward. Spyro felt as though he were walking through water: They trekked along in a sort of hypnotic stupor, unable to think or feel coherently; everything seemed to blur into an incomprehensible mesh of emotions, thoughts, and sensations.

Spyro felt as though he were slowly and somehow painlessly drowning in a sea of infernality; the eerie silhouettes of distant mountains of scorched rock became like vast underwater caverns to him, the charred earth like the bottom of the sea, the miasmic air the very brine of the ocean, crushingly portentous, thick and oppressive, stirred into sluggish motion by the wind.

The only things inconsistent with the nightmarish perception of this stark and decidedly horrid reality were the heat and the diabolical, reddish light.

Spyro and Cynder traveled side by side along the hilly terrain; it seemed that they were always flanked by jagged slabs of stone, rising up around them like fearsome monsters, looming over them like ghastly trees of some spectral forest; so Spyro was glad when they finally debouched onto an open area.

To the right and left, the land stretched out flat and empty, bearing nothing but the occasional fumarole lazily dribbling steam into the choked air; in front of them, the ground continued for a few meters before it fell away completely, straight down, several dozen meters to a lake of lava:

The vast expanse of molten rock resembled a sheet of fire and was surrounded by heat haze; wisps of reddish light – perhaps immaterial or perhaps gaseous rock escaping the basin below – drifted around the lake's periphery and bulged upward from its center, forming a sort of devilish crown.

Just on the other side of the lake, Spyro could see a path leading on northeastward. Otherwise, the periphery was surrounded by impassable jaggedness.

"Looks like we'll have to cross," he said to Cynder. Neither of them moved, though: The lake was too intimidating.

"We're gonna be sitting ducks out there," Cynder observed uneasily, "Couldn't we try and go around…?"

"I don't think so," said Spyro grimly, "We'd have to fly up pretty high to get past those rocks, and the winds are too turbulent up there. We'd make no headway." They fell silent, the necessity of their passage serving to make it no less intimidating a prospect. After a minute or so of nothing but staring aghast at the lake, though, Spyro shook his head as though trying to get water out of his ears.

"Well, it's not gonna get any easier, so let's go…together." Simultaneously, they spread their wings and lifted off, rocketing out over the scintillating expanse of lava. All the way Spyro felt a nagging sensation in the back of his mind that they were being followed, but, glancing around, he never saw anything.

Then, once they had traversed about half of the extent of the lake, a shrill, fiendish cry split the boiling-hot air: Spyro looked up and saw a swarm of wyverns flapping their way towards them.

"Incoming!" he shouted to Cynder; they broke apart, giving themselves more room to maneuver, and not a moment too soon: The wyverns – apparently closer than Spyro had cursorily judged – were suddenly all over them.

Spyro dodged as two of them attempted to dive-bomb him, spun, and spat fire at two others; the jet of flames plumed and caught both in the eye, sending them spiraling downward towards the lava, trailing threads of smoke.

Spyro whirled back around and flapped his wings, rising several meters into the air; casting his gaze about rapidly, he spotted two more wyverns flying towards him. He opened his mouth and sent a bolt of lightning rocketing straight into the first, from which it jumped to the second; both froze, convulsing momentarily before plummeting like lead weights towards the fiery death awaiting them below.

Another wyvern shot by, followed by a jet of billowing shadow fire that enveloped it and sent it down to join its comrades. Cynder appeared and caught Spyro's eye.

"There're too many of them!" she cried, her last word garbled as she was forced to dodge yet another wyvern; Spyro shot a bolt of ice expertly through its eye.

"Head towards the opposite shore!" he instructed her, sending an attacking wyvern spinning away with a blow to the face that sent the nasal bone stabbing back into the brain. "We can try and lose them there!"

Cynder nodded, and they both dived, several wyverns converging above them like a swarm of flies; the two dragons shot off, flying as close to the surface of the lava lake as possible, hoping that it would either deter the wyverns or entice them into falling to their deaths.

The wyverns seemed unwilling to approach the gleaming expanse of molten rock, but finally a trio of them dived in, making a beeline for Spyro. Cynder banked slightly and let loose a piercing screech accompanied by a pulse of red light; the Fear blast struck the leader of the wyverns, sending him careening into one of the other two; the third was caught unawares as Spyro, braking suddenly, came up under him.

Jabbing his tail-blade into the wyvern's lower abdomen, Spyro launched himself forward, slicing the wyvern almost cleanly in half, ripping through the abdominal and peritoneal cavities; he could feel the beast's viscera shredding, could feel the hot blood pouring all over his tail…

Then it was over; Spyro flapped up, watched as the nearly bisected wyvern plummeted into the lava, and leveled off; he was just beginning to breathe easier when an enormous weight struck him in the back, sending him hurtling towards the lake of molten rock: One of the first two wyverns was pushing him downward.

"Spyro!" he heard Cynder scream. All he could see was the rapidly approaching sheet of bright white-orange, burbling greedily in anticipation of its newest victim. The wyvern intended to get him near the surface and then push him in.

_What if I let him?_ Spyro thought. _I've survived heat before_. _But never like this_, cautioned another voice. _This is _lava_ you idiot! It's not a hot summer day or a splash of boiling water, it's _lava! _ Molten rock!_

Somehow that didn't matter to him: Deep inside, Spyro knew – he _knew_ – that he could do this…just as Ignitus had. It didn't occur to him that Ignitus had failed…

Spyro spun in his captor's grasp and seized the wyvern around the abdomen; he furled his wings, encapsulating himself and the wyvern in an embrace that sent them rocketing towards the lava. Spyro heard Cynder repeat her scream as he summoned every ounce of strength he possessed.

He hit the surface. It was hot – brutally hot – but it felt as though the heat had passed through a filter before hitting his body, as though some invisible barrier stood between him and the full force of the molten rock. He smiled as he recognized his success.

The wyvern was less assured: He was writhing in Spyro's grasp, apparently unaware that it was that grasp that was sparing him from a horrible fate…

…a fate to which Spyro subjected him: He released the wyvern, who gladly took the opportunity to try and get as far away from Spyro as possible. Spyro saw, as the wyvern moved away, a sort of bluish shimmer pass over his body: It was nearly indiscernible, but he saw it, and the moment after it passed, the wyvern's eyes widened in terror before they were boiled away; his mouth gaped, allowing the lava to rush in and incinerate his viscera as his skin was melted off.

Spyro closed his eyes, sickened by the unimaginably horrible spectacle before him of a body quite literally being immolated. When he opened them a few seconds later, the wyvern was gone, totally liquefied by the sheer heat of the lava. Spyro felt his heartbeat start to accelerate.

It was an eerie sight: All around him was nothing but fierce, reddish light. It was not like normal light: It was thick and heavy and oppressive. The heat was pressing in upon him like a vise, and he could not hear anything at all but a hissing sound as steam vaporized above him. He felt as though he were suspended inside some monstrous, infernal womb. He wasn't sure how he was breathing – for breathing he was – since there was no oxygen, but he decided not to count his blessings.

Spyro flapped his wings, and slowly, painstakingly slowly, he broke the surface and was released into the open air. Compared to the depths of the lake, the atmosphere above it felt refreshingly cool.

"Spyro!" he heard Cynder scream for the third time, this time out of relief. She nearly tackled him in her joy at seeing that he was not part of the molten mass below. "You're all right! I thought — when that wyvern took you — I thought — I — I — "

She was becoming completely unintelligible, and she sounded as though she were on the verge of tears. She hadn't noticed that _Spyro_ had been the one who had precipitated their submersion into the lava.

Spyro gave her a wan, slightly shaken smile. "I'm fine, Cynder…a little warm, but fine…" Despite the fact that he was trembling from his endeavor, he felt viciously satisfied, as though somehow he had just avenged Ignitus's death.

Just then, though, yet another wyvern – likely the companion of the one whom Spyro had carried into the lake – bore down upon them, screeching, as though it sought to requite his comrade's death: Spyro and Cynder broke apart to dodge, and they simultaneously bathed him in fire, red and black, sending him rocketing like some hideous comet into the lava, spraying molten rock up into the air in a sanguinaceous mist.

"Let's keep going!" Spyro shouted to Cynder over the voluminous sibilation of the lava, "We can't keep fighting them!" They shot off towards the opposite shore, which was still distant by several dozen meters. A clamorous uproar behind him told Spyro that the remaining wyverns were pursuing them doggedly.

"Faster!" he enjoined Cynder, and they increased their pace: The distance closed rapidly, and finally, Spyro and Cynder came to a stop on the mountainous bank. Their celerity caused them to land awkwardly: Spyro stumbled, and Cynder crashed into him, sending them both tumbling forward. Spyro picked himself up and looked around desperately: He spotted a cave barely six meters to his right.

"Over there!" he cried to Cynder, and they both leaped inside, feeling a rush of air as the wyverns swept by. Tripping yet again and rolling rather cloddishly into the back of the cave, Spyro felt his head strike a rock; though the force of the impact was blocked by his helmet, he nevertheless was overcome by a wave of vertiginous ringing in his ears.

Fighting through it, he stood just in time to see a wyvern attempting to enter the cave. Cynder was staggering to her feet, and several other wyverns were poised to follow their cohort. Spyro knew that he had to stop it here and now: If those wyverns got into the cave, he and Cynder were sitting ducks.

Spyro opened his mouth and let loose a bolt of shimmering, amethyst Fury energy: The blast caught the wyvern squarely in the face, sent him flying out of the cave, and scattered his compatriots. Spyro waited, breathing heavily, barely able to stand; the wyverns left. After several tense moments, Spyro sighed and slumped to the ground.

Cynder crawled over to him.

"Spyro…? Are you okay…?"

He wasn't: The horribly shaken, disquieted sensation that had possessed him upon emerging from the lake had returned; he was trembling violently, both from physical exertion and from something far more sinister and spookily indefinable, as though some monstrous specter hovered over him, sapping him of strength like a deathly leech.

Spyro felt like crying, but he had not the strength even to shed tears. The weight of it all – of his fatigue, of his narrow escape from death, of the loss of Ignitus, of the hopes of the world resting on his shoulders, of his destiny, of _life_ – it all hit him now with crushing force, and it was all he could do to not wail inconsolably to the sliver of bleak and ashen sky visible through the small mouth of the cave.

"Spyro?" He looked up: Cynder was staring at him fearfully, as though he had suddenly stopped breathing; her green eyes were full of concern, and she too bore signs of exhaustion: Her body was quivering slightly, she was covered in dust, blood was smeared along her flank at various points, and the nick in her shoulder showed clearly in the hazy firelight.

"I…I just…" Spyro tried to find words to express the lugubrious sense of horror and hopelessness that had suddenly constricted his heart like a python, but it had apparently subjected his lungs to the same torment, as no words would rise to his lips. He lapsed into silence.

Spyro and Cynder lay there for what felt like a long time, listening to the muffled sounds of the Burned Lands, echoing with chilling eeriness through the cave mouth, as though they emanated from the depths of some sepulchral abyss. Then, Spyro finally stood, not fully recovered, but at least no longer trembling.

"C'mon," he mumbled, "We should get going…they'll probably bring reinforcements…" So, weak and weary as they were, they arose and departed, heading northeast.

Spyro's head ached from the unfriendly contact that it had sustained when they had rolled into the cave; his legs throbbed from walking, his wings from flying. Even his _eyes_ ached — from a combination of the choking dust, the bizarre, piercing light, and an ineffable desire to weep.

It was all he could do to continue putting one paw in front of another.

He kept glancing at Cynder: She, too, was struggling to go on; her emerald eyes were blinking rapidly, and her paw slipped several times on loose pebbles; her tail-blade was dragging on the ground.

All at once, it hit Spyro: _It's my fault._

_All that's happened to her…it's my fault. Everything…right from when Malefor first took her…all my fault…_

Somehow, that single thought – that overwhelmingly, excruciatingly painful thought – broke the dam blocking his eyes, and he began to cry.

Not violently or even loudly…but steadily and unstoppably.

Tears poured down his face, streaking through the grime that coated his cheeks, and then dripped down to the ground, where they hissed as they absorbed the fiendish heat of the Burned Lands, instantly vaporizing and leaving a trail of wisps behind him.

"Spyro?" Cynder must have heard the sound. "Spyro, what's wrong?" Her voice was full of concern; he glanced at her, but meeting her eyes sent an unbelievable jolt of pain through his heart. He looked down and shook his head.

There was no way he could verbalize what was surging through him right now; the storm of emotions raging deep within him had smashed his voice into tiny little pieces, and even if he could speak…what would he say?

Sorry? Right now, that felt like the most hateful word in the entire English language.

He kept shaking his head; that was the only way he could think of to communicate that there was simply no expressing the sheer agony that was ripping through him. Cynder edged closer to him, just enough so that every other step, her shoulder brushed up against his.

That was enough.

They kept walking, Spyro leaving behind a trail of burning tears, for mile after mile after mile. Night was evidently falling fast: The sky was taking on a hideous aspect, a canvas of boiling blackness smeared with red and white light as it was rent with fire and lightning. The air became not cooler but lighter.

They had to find shelter, fast: The very last thing that Spyro wanted to do was walk through this living hell in the _dark_.

They came to the crest of a small acclivity, and there they saw, stretched out before them, a forest of needle-like spires of rock, some short, some tall, some thick, some thin, all jagged and ominous.

"Great," Cynder muttered exasperatedly, "What _now?_"

"We have to go through," Spyro said simply, "There's no choice — we've gotta find shelter." They spread their wings and lifted off, soaring between the peaks, weaving in and out to try and stay on the same northeastward path.

Spyro glanced down and noticed that he could not actually see the ground: only the ceaseless trunks of this horrific sea of spires; a mysterious fog seemed to prevent his gaze from penetrating too far. There were ledges here and there — like mountain precipices or something. _Maybe there's a cave down there…_

Just then, something whizzed by his ear, producing an audible _click_ as it pinged off of a passing spire; Spyro turned his head just in time for a second object to ping off of his helmet. There, behind them, impossibly agile, jumping from spire to spire, were orcs – a veritable swarm of them – crossbows firing away.

"Orcs!" he bellowed to Cynder, "Evade!" They began to bob and weave in abrupt, random movements as a hail of arrows filled the air. Spyro shot off a prayer of thanks that his helmet had been thick enough to deflect that arrow, or he would likely have been killed. His present flight from death took priority, though:

He streaked through the spires of rock, turning and spinning and weaving to stay as unpredictable a target as possible, yet at the same time trying to minimize loss in speed; there were moments when Cynder, engaged in the same maneuvers, fell out of his sight, and for a few ghastly seconds he was alone fleeing the horde of orcs — but then she was there again.

And still the orcs were firing their crossbows, sharp flecks of deadly metal pinging left and right off of the spires, the miasmic, torrid air roiling with the steel darts.

"We can't outrun them!" Cynder cried out; there was desperation in her voice.

"We can't turn and fight either!" Spyro shouted back, "They'll just overwhelm us!" It was true: If they retaliated head-on, they'd just get drowned in bolts.

Spyro opened his mouth and launched a conical blast of seismic energy at a thick spire as he passed: The stone needle exploded with vicious force, spattering the air with fragments and dust. Spyro glanced back and saw that he had slowed up a couple of the orcs, but the majority were still swarming after them. He saw Cynder launch a Fear blast backward, but with the same negligible effect.

"No good — there's just too many!" He could feel panic boiling up inside him like some terrible, caustic liquid: There were so many orcs, and they couldn't outrun them or fight them — what now? Were they just going to die here like this? Was it all going to end here and now? Everything they'd fought for, everything they'd lost, all the pain, all the blood, the tears, the fear — was it all for nothing?

_No!_ A voice roared in Spyro's mind.

He couldn't let that happen. He knew what he could do — one last option… But he was so tired! Where would he find the strength?

He glanced over at Cynder: There was terror in her eyes. He couldn't let her die: She deserved a chance to overcome the darkness that Malefor drowned her in, a chance to start over again…

He heard Ignitus's voice in his head: _Unleash the _true _dragon within you…_

Spyro took a deep breath; he calmed himself, feeling power surge through him, waves of power – fueled by his anger at the Dark Master, his fear for Cynder, his agony over the hell that they had both put her through – all building inside him, deep in his heart, burning like a star…

He spotted a huge precipice on a spire ahead, with a cave that looked like it was spacious enough to provide shelter for the night.

_That'll do._

"Cynder, head to that cave!"

"What — are you crazy?" she screamed.

"I need you to trust me!" he replied. Something in his voice – the severity, the unearthly calm, or maybe an echo of the power building within him – must have convinced her: She dived towards the cave, which was rapidly approaching.

He had to act now.

Spyro whirled midair, hovering; the orcs were rushing towards him like a flood, and crossbow bolts were wreathing around him. He breathed deep, closed his eyes, and called up the power that was by now a raging fire inside him: He felt it as it surged through every blood vessel, every nerve, every muscle, expanding like a bubble. He opened his eyes as a sphere of shimmering light began to envelop him, pressure building up like waters collecting at a dam.

Crossbow bolts vanished as they passed through the brilliant, amethyst light, obliterated by pure power as Spyro collected the Fury energy and the orcs drew ever closer…

Then he let it go, willed it forward, and the dam burst, the floodwaters roared out; the bubble of light shattered, forming a wave that consumed the orcs as they approached; Spyro heard their screams through an ethereal hum and the sizzling of their bodies as they were decimated by his Fury —

Then they were gone, all was quiet, the Fury subsided, and Spyro felt his strength pour out through the same breach in the dam through which his power had flowed; he couldn't move, and he felt himself drop from the sky…

And then he felt the air beneath him eddy and writhe, forming a cushion that floated him gently down to the precipice, where Cynder stood. She had saved him.

"Spyro!" she exclaimed, darting to his side as he lay on the ground, trembling in sheer exhaustion.

"'M fine…" he murmured in a low voice, trying to push himself to his paws; Cynder held him down.

"No, rest a sec, Spyro…" He wanted to tell her that they didn't have a sec, that they had to get inside, _now_, but…he was so tired… He didn't think he could form the words, or even stand up anyway.

He just lay there for a minute, breathing deep, letting his aching body rest, Cynder sitting right next to him, staring at him with a queer, baffled, compassionate look; she rested her paw on his chest — just let it sit there, right over his heart.

After that eternal minute, he pushed himself up; he just barely had the strength to stand. Cynder slid under his shoulder to help him.

"Let's get inside," he gasped; he was already breathless from the effort of staying on his paws. Cynder nodded, and they hobbled into the cave. It wasn't really cooler, but it was at least obscured from the hellish killing field that was that forest of spires.

Spyro collapsed near the back of the cave; he didn't think he could move another inch. Cynder lay down next to him; she touched her nose gently to his cheek.

"You could've hurt yourself," she whispered simply. It wasn't a question or an accusation or a reprimand. It was a concern. He could hear that concern drenching her voice.

"We had to get away from those orcs," Spyro replied in a slurred mumble; he could hardly keep his eyes open.

"You didn't have to do it alone." He hadn't thought of that.

"I couldn't risk you getting hurt in case it didn't work." That was kind of lame — if it hadn't worked, she was just as vulnerable – more so – than she would have been had they been up in the air together.

It was lame, but he supposed it was the truth.

Cynder didn't seem to care; she just kept staring at him.

"We should block that entrance," Spyro suddenly said, trying to stand; Cynder held him down with one wing.

"No, Spyro — you need to rest. C'mon, the cave wraps back a little farther, let's just move out of view of the entrance…" Spyro thought about that: _I really should block the entrance…_ But even the thought of moving farther into the cave was agonizing…

"Okay," he muttered. Cynder helped him struggle to his paws and led him off to the left, where the cave did indeed form an alcove out of sight of the entrance. They ensconced themselves in the deep shadows.

Spyro knew it was a small blessing, but it was a relief to be out of sight, to be able to drop his guard just a tiny bit. He plopped onto the ground, absolutely exhausted; Cynder lay down next to him.

"You go to sleep, Spyro — get some rest. I'll stand watch."

"You need sleep, too, Cynder," Spyro told her tiredly: She tried to hide it, but her own enervation showed. She looked deep in his eyes, and Spyro didn't like the fear he saw there.

"Spyro, I'm scared." Spyro looked back at her.

"I know. I am, too." He turned his head towards the light and used what little energy he had left to force a wall of rock to rise from the earth, sealing off the chamber except for a crack of light near the ceiling.

"Let's just get some sleep, okay?" he murmured.

"Okay," she whispered. They laid their heads down, and all Spyro could think about as his eyelids dropped like stones was how sorry he felt for all he'd brought upon her. This dragoness shouldn't be here, so terrified and tired and bruised and battered — she shouldn't have had to go through this.

He felt tears coming on, but before they could come out, he felt exhaustion – physical, emotional, and mental –override his anguish: He fell into an abyss of sleep.

His last thought was that, despite the infernal heat, despite the burning, aching sensation permeating his whole body, despite the ghastly, choking confinement of this sealed-off chamber…

…he was glad to feel the warmth of Cynder's body next to him.


	3. noctem timēre

**_IN UMBRĀ ARTIFICIS ĀTRĪ_**

"_noctem timēre_"

"To Fear the Night"

* * *

CUM NOX VENIT, UMBRAE CADĀVERŌSAE ĪNFERAEQUE EX ABYSSŌ ORBEM VĪVŌRUM INUNDĀBUNT. ILLĒS CORDĒS QUAE PERVĪVUNT CĀLĪGINEM PLŌRĀBUNT. NŪBĒS ATRŌCĒS EŌS INUMBRĀBUNT. TENEBRAE ADSURGENT.

ET OMNIA CORDĒS CŌGNŌSCENT

NOCTEM TIMĒRE

* * *

Spyro didn't sleep well.

For the first couple of hours, pure exhaustion kept his brain from constructing any dreams, but then – all too soon – his mind's eye roiled with flashes of light, screams, the pungent odors of blood, metal, burning sulfur; with terror and despair bitter as the briniest of seas, and throughout it all, the sound of someone crying, and the image of a bloodstained moon —

Spyro's eyes flew open to stare at solid walls of darkness, his heart pounding against his ribs. The air was chokingly hot, thick with dust, and the tiny crack of light coming from the sealed corridor revealed a ghastly, murky red color. That horrible light was just enough to see a few inches, but somehow that made the shadows seem all the more terrible — almost tangible as Spyro looked around, fearful that something would jump out at him.

He tried to close his eyes and go back to sleep, but something kept them from shutting, something kept him from lowering his guard, and he found himself staring at nothing, at a wall of blackness tinged in red…like blood…

All at once, he remembered his dream: the bloodied moon. He knew that dream. He'd had it three times in Warfang — the preceding night, in fact. How could it have only been twenty-four hours?

In this hell on Earth – and with the loss of Ignitus – each second felt like an eon.

He'd had the same feeling on that night: a horrible, all-consuming dread, a breathless feeling of panic, of impending, crushing destiny, of climax. This was it. This was the end. There was no turning back, no door number three.

Just Malefor.

Spyro shuddered. It had been easy to cast out fear in Warfang, but here? In this hellish limbo world between life and death, where it seemed that only the damned could live, fear seemed no longer an exception, but the rule.

…Was it fear, or was it just that Malefor's evil was so palpable, so pervasive, that Spyro's soul literally quaked with it — resonated disharmoniously with it?

Was he imagining it? Was it all just grief from Ignitus's death?

He couldn't dwell much on that: It brought too much pain. Even now, just thinking momentarily of his former mentor, he could feel his breath catching in his throat, his heart squeezed by the iron bands of unbearable sorrow.

…What if he failed? What if they couldn't stop Malefor? What if they died tomorrow, or the next day?

…or tonight?

Spyro had never been a fearful dragon, and he'd certainly never been afraid of the dark…but this night, this terrible, terrible night…

…he was scared. Brutally scared. Impossibly scared. So scared it was painful. He could actually feel pains in his chest from the icy needles stabbing his heart. He never knew that fear could be so potent, so venomous, so paralyzing.

He glanced at Cynder, asleep next to him: She was twitching, her mouth moving ever so slightly, as though trying to form words. Was she having a nightmare? Was this same deathly fear plaguing her, too?

That thought was even worse than the fear: If the fear was like icy needles, that thought was like a frigid saber straight through his chest.

The darkness seemed to be closing in threateningly around them; menacing shadows slithered before him with a taunting torpor, as though the infernal heat had caused them to congeal and agglutinate into despicable masses of solid black.

Spyro shook his head. _Stop it, moron! It's just shadows! Go to sleep…_

He really should: He would need every ounce of strength he possessed, and this was _not_ the night to stay awake.

He laid his head back down and forced himself to close his eyes. The softer darkness inside his eyelids was welcoming, and he started to drift off —

Then suddenly, Cynder writhed and leaped to her paws, a scream rending the hellish night.

Spyro bounded to his paws, heart racing, eyes wide, his head darting around, muscles tensed, eyes seeking some target, something that could have caused that scream —

Nothing.

All that met his frantic gaze was impenetrable darkness.

He turned to Cynder, now perplexed: She was standing there crying, bawling, tears cascading down her cheeks, her entire body quaking with something that sent a chilly arrow through Spyro's heart…

"Cynder, what's wrong?" he asked her, stepping closer, panic evident in his voice.

"I-I…I…" Cynder choked in a ravaged voice. She shook her head desperately, still sobbing and shaking. Spyro was started to get scared all over again; he took another step forward, and then she flung her wings around him and held him closer than she had yesterday when Ignitus had died.

He could feel her body wracked with sobs as her tears poured all down his shoulder, and he could almost taste her fear in the air, and though he had no idea how or why, Spyro could feel the selfsame fear boiling up inside him, resonating with hers, and breaking the surface: He started crying too. He hugged her back.

They sat there, weeping in the darkness, for a long moment — who could say how long? Who could say why?

Spyro couldn't: He had no idea what was going through his head. It felt like his mind had been switched off. He couldn't think coherently. All he knew was that being able to hug Cynder, to know that he wasn't alone, was the only thing that made the pain bearable, the only thing that kept him from totally collapsing.

He sensed the same feeling from her: There was a desperation in the way that they held on to each other, as though they were each other's life supports in a sea of despair and terror. It felt as if the whole world were a seething cauldron of hellish darkness, shadows swarming around them like plutonian hordes, cackling maniacally as they shrank into this little box of a cave.

Spyro felt as though if he let go of Cynder, he would be consumed by the night. He held on tighter, and so did she.

He had never been so afraid of the night.

They kept crying.

Minutes passed, and Spyro felt that an hour had slipped by before Cynder finally spoke, in a hoarse, tremulous whisper:

"I had a terrible dream. You and I reached the Temple, and Malefor was there, and then…" Her voice caught, snagged on a fresh wave of tears, but this time, she held herself in control and, after a brief pause, forced herself to continue: "…then, I felt him…_inside_ me. Like he used to be, back…before…" It was as though she couldn't say the words, they were so vile, but Spyro could tell what she meant.

He couldn't think what to say: How could he even imagine the horror that she would've felt, to relive the terrible darkness in which she had once been immersed, rendered all the more terrible because she knew what it was. It was one thing to live in darkness your entire life…it was another to go back to the darkness after having seen the light.

Cynder kept going: "I could feel him take control like he used to. I could…I could feel his…his _evil_…like blood in my veins, burning, just _burning_…and then he made me turn on you, and made me attack you, and I…I…" She started choking up again; her voice was a quaking breath when she finally managed to finish: "I…I just wanted it to stop…just…_stop_…and I woke up screaming."

She leaned back: Her obsidian scales were shining – even in the dull, clogged light of the cave – with tears, and her emerald eyes burned like stars in the sky. "Spyro, what're we gonna do? How are we gonna fight him? How…how can we?"

Spyro looked her in the eye, and for a long moment, he just stared into those emerald orbs, lost in the sea of green. There were only two coherent thoughts in his mind: how much pain it caused him to see her so stricken with fear and despair; and how he knew that the only thing keeping him from falling apart like she was so close to doing was her wings around him.

"I don't know, Cynder," he answered her honestly. A night like this…the sheer terror of it boiled away lies. Mendacity vanished in the wake of horror. Only the truth would weather this night. Only that pearl would not dissolve in this menacing mire.

"I really don't know," he continued, "but I know we have to try. There's no turning back." Cynder nodded tremblingly.

"I know, it's just…I'm scared," she confessed, "more scared than I've ever been."

"I am, too, Cynder." It was as though fear were an infectious disease, contaminating the very air they breathed, the most insidious pollutant of the sinister miasma that blanketed the whole Burned Lands.

The cave was like a gas chamber, full of suffocating terror; Cynder's scent wreathed around him in the darkness felt like the breath of life, the one thing that gave him a reason to fight on, to just barely hold his head above the waters of despair threatening to engulf him.

Spyro drank in that scent and held her closer.

They sat in silence for a long moment; it was so quiet – aside from the distant hisses and whines of the Burned Lands – Spyro could hear his and Cynder's hearts beating in the night, pumping blood through their bodies…

_For how much longer? _

_Stop it!_

Then…there was a noise outside.

Cynder started, her mouth opening to eject a gasp of surprise; Spyro slapped a paw reflexively across her mouth and held her closer:

"Shh…" he breathed into her ear; she nodded slowly, and they both grew totally still. The noise came again: It was a scraping, plodding sound, as though something were poking around in the cave beyond the wall of rock.

Spyro closed his eyes and tried to concentrate. _C'mon, Spyro, now's not the time to zone out: Focus…_ He managed to call up enough willpower to expand his senses outward like a bubble, sweeping up the intruder outside and exposing it to his scrutiny…

An orc. Just one, but there were surely others nearby.

They were looking for Spyro and Cynder.

Spyro opened his eyes halfway and mouthed the word _orc_ to Cynder. Her eyes went wide, but she stayed quiet and nodded. Spyro closed his eyes again and focused back on the orc.

He could see it in his mind, running its scaly, jagged hands along the walls, its claws clicking on the stone as it investigated.

It came to the wall that Spyro had erected, and it paused, running its beady eyes up and down, tapping the rock as though trying to see if it was hollow.

Spyro felt his heart start to beat more rapidly, and before he could help it, he drew Cynder closer to him; he could tell, without even opening his eyes and looking at her, that she sensed something wrong: Her own grip tightened, too, and there was a slight hiss as she took in a sharp breath.

The orc paused.

Had it heard?

Spyro held his breath; the creature waited a moment, and then recommenced its investigation, poking all along the rock wall. It seemed to be eying the crack that Spyro had left between the wall and the ceiling so that air could circulate.

The orc cocked its head.

Spyro could feel his heart racing — he was genuinely terrified that the orc might hear it pounding against his ribs.

_Please…please, don't let him try and get in!_ Spyro begged — to whom, he had no idea. _Please, please, please…please, just let him walk away…please just walk away…_

He could feel Cynder start to tremble; either something about Spyro's body language signaled his thoughts, or she was simply discomfited by the strained silence. He held her a little closer, trying to reassure her…and himself.

_Please just go away!_ He practically moaned the words in his head, as though he could will the orc away.

Finally, after a moment that felt like an eternity, the orc turned and left. Spyro tracked him until he was several dozen yards away from the cave mouth, and then he opened his eyes and let out a long breath.

"He's gone," Spyro whispered. Cynder shuddered.

"Oh, Spyro," she groaned tremulously, "what're we gonna do? We can't even deal with an orc — " She broke off in a whimper of despair.

"Let's just try and get some sleep," Spyro mumbled, feeling lightheaded.

"Okay…" Lying down meant that they had to relinquish their holds on each other, and for one reason or another, it took them several minutes to do it. Once they had lain down, Spyro felt Cynder put a wing across him; he reciprocated.

They inched closer and closer to each other, as though even the tiniest separation between their bodies was a void that threatened to suck them into the abyss of terror, despair, and fire that was this night in the Burned Lands.

Spyro closed his eyes and tried to sleep, but too many things were flying around in his head. Watching that orc through his mind's eye had broken the barrier that he had placed on his extrasensory capacity, and now he was picking up signals from all over the place: sounds resonating in his mind like death screams; the searing odors of blood and sulfur deluging his nostrils; flashes of light popping up before his eyes, spatters of blood and blades of lightning rending sheets of dust and smoke…

Through all of it, he would have sworn that he could hear the evil cackling of the Dark Master in the background.

Once, an image flashed before his mind's eye of a jagged black claw reaching out towards him and Cynder, at which point his eyes flew open and he glanced around in terror before closing his eyes again and sidling a little closer to Cynder.

In the darkness, he could feel her twitch every so often, her breathing soft and even; he could even hear her heartbeat, slow and strong. Spyro focused all his attention on that single sound, the beating of that single heart, and the terrible specters in his mind melted away into oblivion.

All that remained was the beating of Cynder's heart.

Spyro fell asleep…

* * *

They rose at first light – signaled only by a mollification of the shadows in the cave – and set off again. The forest of rock spires fell behind them quickly, giving way to vast plains of stone ridges, with pillar-like obtrusions here and there.

At first, there were simply clusters of pillars scattered about, but as they journeyed on, the clusters grew in size and number, and soon they were blanketing the ground — Spyro guessed that they were walking through some sort of calcified forest. How the trees had been turned to stone, he had no idea…

There was good news, though: If they were in forested areas, it meant that they would probably reach the Temple by day's end. These had to be the intervening swamps — what was left of them anyway…

Spyro thought of his parents, and of Sparx, and his heart twisted in his chest, and he momentarily lost his breath. He hoped they'd gotten underground…

_Stop thinking about that!_ he chided himself viciously, fighting tears. _Focus, Spyro! You need to stay focused!_

But try as he might, he couldn't seem to keep his attention on the terrain before him. He should have been watching for possible threats, but his mind was haunted by the previous night. He didn't think that – if he and Cynder survived this hell – he would ever forget the night they passed here in the Burned Lands.

Something had changed last night; somehow, everything was the same, but everything was different, and Spyro couldn't look at Cynder without recalling the fear in her eyes, the way she had shuddered when the orc had finally left, the feel of her body against his, and most of all, that bloodcurdling scream…

Spyro shook his head, as though trying to get water out of his ears. _Stop it!_

He glanced at her: She was walking along beside him, head down, the same haunted look in her eyes that Spyro felt in his heart. Like him, she would occasionally glance around to make sure that they weren't about to be ambushed, but then she would immediately return to her ghastly reverie.

On top of everything, hunger was starting to set in: They hadn't eaten anything since the previous morning, and walking around in this devilish heat was hardly helpful.

At least water Spyro could provide: His Ice powers had saved the day there when, just this morning, they'd both woken up with throats so dry that they couldn't speak.

Still, water had no caloric value, and eventually they were going to need to take in some calories…especially if they had to keep fighting Malefor's minions…

By afternoon, their stomachs were growling regularly. Neither of them was embarrassed — this hellish land burned away embarrassment like it burned away lies. Stark, unadulterated, and livid reality lay around them in grisly detail.

Just in case they had thought that things could not get any worse, the lava – which had been absent ever since they had passed the lake of fire yesterday – was now returning: Pools of it were burbling in little craters, sometimes so shallow that the molten rock was frothing over the lips of its container, emitting plumes of steam as it fused with the charred earth.

They came to a huge band of the fiery red-orange fluid — Spyro guessed that that was the Silver River, which he knew ran only a few miles from the Temple.

There was not a moment to spare: Already, the sky was growing dark again, traces of dusk – soft winds, an orange tint to the infernal light, and a somber glow to the clouds above – began to appear.

Past that point, the lava grew commoner, such that they were basically following trails of rock enisled by fire. At points, the path narrowed to barely ten yards, and at other points, it was five times that. The trails wound and curved and looped and doubled back, and had the winds not been churning like an ocean gale, Spyro would have suggested that they simply take an aerial shortcut. They would have to find somewhere where the winds thinned out…

Then he heard the already-all-too-familiar noise of abruptly disturbed earth: A swarm of Grublins emerged from the ground behind them.

Glancing at Cynder and seeing that she, too, had noticed, Spyro spun and spat a jet of flames, engulfing half of the foul creatures before they could move; Cynder let loose a whirlwind that spread the flames and scooped up the Grublins that had dodged them to begin with.

They were all dead in seconds, scorched to the bone.

Spyro paused: "That was way too easy…" he muttered darkly.

Then the earth beneath him blasted upward, and he felt himself flung into the air, landing hard a short distance away; scrambling to his paws and glancing around feverishly, he spotted an orc – all decked out in armor and wielding a wicked-looking halberd – exchanging blows with Cynder: Her claws and tail-blade weren't sharp enough to penetrate his gruesome armor, and it seemed all she could do to evade its broad swipes. If even one of those blows landed…

Spyro darted forward and spat a bolt of electrical energy, magnetizing the orc's weapon and repulsing it, effectively disarming him; Cynder seized the opportunity to cloak her tail in corrosive venom and jab it over her head like a scorpion, piercing the orc's breastplate as easily as if it hadn't been there at all.

The creature gurgled horribly as its viscera were dissolved in acid, and Cynder wrenched her tail free; blood and acid spattered the ground, and the orc collapsed, dead. Spyro and Cynder were both breathing hard, but there didn't seem to be any more enemies: All was quiet.

"Is he just _toying_ with us now?" Cynder hissed, half in fury, half in terror. Spyro shook his head and swallowed deep gulps of miasmic air.

"I dunno — let's just keep going…" They set off again, a little more quickly this time, a little more attentive of their surroundings, now dreading the next ambush.

Spyro couldn't stop himself from thinking about how close that orc had come to killing Cynder, and how unprepared they had been — what if there had been more than one? What if there had been wyverns? Trolls? How could they hope to defeat Malefor if they could barely deal with a single orc?

He shook his head. _Get it together, Spyro! Panicking won't do you any good…_

It was hard not to panic: Walking through a living hell, a world infested with Malefor's evil, relentless, merciless, soulless hordes, trekking on through impossible adversity, no food, no safety, all to face the Dark Master who was the perpetrator of it all, the paragon of evil — panicking seemed like a reasonable response.

But no. They couldn't. There was too much riding on them.

_Everything_ was riding on them…

They were following a wide acclivity to its peak when suddenly the earth quaked, and halberdiers emerged from the scorched ground, followed by Grublins.

Spyro had hardly registered their appearance before a Grublin was mere feet from him: It swatted at his head with a club; Spyro butted his head against the club, his helmet easily absorbing the impact, and using the motion to clamp his jaws over the Grublin's arm, sinking his teeth deep into its frail appendage.

Dark, foul-tasting blood poured through his mouth as he ground the creature's bone to dust, slamming it to the ground as it let out a shriek; he raked a claw through its throat, silencing it forever. Releasing its arm, he looked up in time to spat a jet of flame that consumed three of its brethren.

He heard the chilling screech of Fear blasts to his right, and the squeals of the Grublins as they were overcome in terror. It must have felt nice to impart some of the fear of the last twenty-four hours onto their enemies…

Spyro lunged at a halberdier, ducking under its weapon and ramming it to the ground, sinking his jaws into his neck, deeper and deeper until he felt his teeth scrape bone; the spine slid nicely between his jaws: One snap, and the creature moved no more. Spitting out blood, he lifted his head just barely in time to jump backwards as a second halberdier swung its weapon in a wide arc, slashing the space where he had just been.

Spyro fired a bolt of ice straight through its eye, dropping it dead.

A third took its place, winding up a blow; he nailed it squarely in the chest with a blast of seismic power, sending it flying into a small rock protrusion, which shattered on impact, the ragged halberd spinning off into the air.

Spyro glanced to his right: Cynder was still drowning Grublins in waves of elemental attacks as they swarmed her; he looked around, seeing that only two halberdiers remained, and they were circling cautiously — probably having seen the fates of their comrades.

Spyro darted to Cynder's side, just in time to combine his own fire to her shadow fire, engulfing a whole horde of Grublins in crimson and black flames. A mass of the foul, insectile creatures tried to overwhelm them; Spyro summoned up a whirlwind of ice and frigid air, enveloping himself and Cynder as the Grublins closed it: The ones that came too close were flash frozen and shattered, and the rest were riddled with wickedly sharp bolts of ice.

Spyro let the whirlwind die as the Grublin bodies clattered to earth. The two halberdiers were rushing towards them, but he launched a lightning bolt at them as Cynder vanished in a plume of shadows; the halberdiers convulsed as they were deluged in electrical energy, and then Cynder was there, emerging from the ground in a burst of shadow fire that consumed them for good.

Cynder reappeared next to Spyro, but before either of them could breathe a word, the earth trembled yet again, and an enormous breach appeared in the ground, and out of the charred rock and soil arose a fearsome creature that Spyro could only describe as an orc on steroids: It was at least five times bigger, with hideously purplish skin, a broad, spiky shield, and an enormous mace. It had a long, thick, scorpion-like tail.

The thing let out a roar and charged, swinging its mace wildly.

"In the air!" Spyro shouted, flapping his wings and powering into the sky, Cynder hot on his heels as they soared just out of reach of the thuggish swings of this monstrous beast. The thing tried to swipe at them over its head; Cynder spat acid into its eyes, causing it to bellow in pain — or anger, Spyro couldn't really tell.

He rained down fire on it, hoping to kill it while it was distracted by the acid, but the flames seemed to only aggravate it further, and it began flailing about with its mace. He kept trying to launch attacks at it, Cynder dittoing his moves, but the thing seemed to get angrier and angrier.

Then, one of the blows from its flailing shield arm caught Spyro in the gut, sending him soaring towards a rock spire. He felt his breath rush out of his lungs with a _whoosh_ as pain jolted through his body on impact; he slumped to the ground, little spots popping up in front of his eyes as he was overcome with vertigo.

It was all he could do to not vomit.

The beast roared and charged towards him — it must've gotten the acid out of its eyes.

It was probably only a dozen yards away when Cynder reappeared; she spat more acid, this time onto its knees, sending it careening to the ground with a crash, its head only a few feet from Spyro; Cynder pounced onto its neck, swiping through one of its carotid arteries with her tail-blade, and, as blood gushed out in a dark crimson fountain, poured shadow fire onto its head.

When the wispy flames cleared, the monstrous creature lay still, filthy mouth agape, little feathers of shadow drifting lazily skyward, blood still pouring out onto the charred ground, its eyes gazing sightlessly at Spyro, who forced himself to his paws.

Cynder was breathing hard as she practically fell off of the beast's body and staggered over to him.

Spyro felt like he should hug her, and that she wanted to hug him, but they were both so breathless, and Spyro's head was still spinning, that they simply stood close together. Spyro could feel the monstrous creature's blood soaking their paws.

"Are…are you okay?" Cynder gasped.

"Y-Yeah," Spyro choked out; speaking seemed to intensify his vertigo. They stood in silence for a couple minutes. "Okay," Spyro muttered as the shock of his contact with the rock pillar faded, "we oughta get going…" Cynder nodded weakly, and they set off towards the peak of the acclivity.

Consciously or unconsciously, they refused to step more than a few inches away from each other.

They reached the top, and a hellish scene sprawled out before them: The acclivity terminated in a wall of rock that dropped straight down into a river of lava that in turn ran parallel to the cliff face and, probably a hundred yards off to the left, turned ninety degrees right. To the right, the fiery river churned from the input of a cataract, whose source was invisible from their position. They could see wyverns patrolling the river.

There was a small ledge off to the left and probably two dozen yards above their current elevation, and below, bounded by the river, was a maze of charred trees, at the far end of which Spyro could see the river flow through a stone arch. Lifting his eyes from there, he saw a huge volcano not far off, and above that, high in the sky, amidst a swirling sea of dust, rock, and fire, was the Dragon Temple.

"He's up there somewhere, isn't he?" Cynder asked darkly, following his gaze. Spyro knew what she meant, but seeing the Temple like that had tied a knot in his throat; he stayed silent. "I…I don't know if I can go through with this," Cynder confessed, dropping her head in despair.

Spyro turned to her: "I don't know either," he admitted matter-of-factly, "but we have to. We're all that's left. If we don't…everything we've fought for…" He thought of Ignitus, and a bolt of pain lanced through his heart. "…everything we've _lost_…its all for nothing!" Cynder looked him in the eye and smiled weakly.

"All right then," she said in a watery voice, "I'll go." She gave him a mischievous look that somehow came out tearful: "But only because I wanna get rid of this chain!" Spyro smiled warmly at her. He reached up with one paw and gently wiped dark blood – probably that creature's – from her face.

"C'mon," he murmured softly, "the air's too thick down here with all the ash. There's probably an updraft nearer to the volcano." Cynder nodded. Spyro turned his gaze back to the landscape. "Looks like we'll have to go through that forest maze to where the river goes through that stone arch."

"We can probably get a better view from that cliff," Cynder observed, pointing to the left, where a ledge jutted out over the river.

"Let's be careful, though," Spyro cautioned, "Those wyverns out there don't look very friendly." They flapped their wings, ascended, and flew swiftly to the precipice, landing lightly only a few seconds later. Nevertheless, when he turned around, Spyro saw the wyverns – at least a dozen of them – flying towards them, their screeches muffled eerily by the thick, steamy air.

"Looks like we've got company!" Cynder said unnecessarily, poised to launch herself back into the sky. Spyro held her back.

"No — we're better off standing our ground here."

"You got an idea?"

"One — trust me," he added, heading off what he knew was going to be a protest. Cynder fell quiet and nodded.

As the wyverns drew near, Spyro rose into the air, furling his wings and curling in his tail so that his body formed a ball; a buzzing, crackling sound roared in his ears as electricity kindled an orb of shimmering light around him. He expanded the field, sending out pulses of electromagnetic energy, pouring his senses into the waves, which washed over the wyverns, sending him back information…

He could hear their heartbeats, sense the electrical flares of their neurons, the crackle of signals as their brains coordinated the flapping of their wings; he focused on the hearts, perceiving the faint field surrounding them, searching for just the right frequency and amplitude…

_That's it_. He smiled to himself as he sent out a final, more powerful pulse of electricity: As it washed over the wyverns, they suddenly froze midair, eyes dilated in shock as their hearts were suddenly short-circuited, their tissues screaming as the blood stood still in their veins; they dropped, all dozen of them, as one, into the lava below.

Spyro released the field and dropped back to earth, little flickers of electricity still riddling the air around him.

"Whoa," Cynder murmured, "if I didn't know you…that would've been scary."

"Desperate times," Spyro muttered back, shrugging his shoulders, "Besides, we don't have time to spare." He turned and looked out over the maze of charred trees that they had to cross. "Looks like that wide path leads to the other side," he said, pointing at a large trail that ran through the trees.

"Then let's go — I don't like the feel of things up here," Cynder said with a shudder. They flapped their wings and glided across the river, landing at the edge of the burnt forest. They entered along the wide path.

It was a terribly eerie feeling, walking through those scorched, ghostly trees. It was like walking through a graveyard. Spyro could actually hear the death screams of the erstwhile denizens of this little pocket of forest…could taste their blood as it was boiled and whisked away by the sheer heat of the Destroyer's passage…could see their eyes as they were filled with flames…

He shuddered. Cynder saw, but she said nothing; she moved a few inches closer.

They rounded a bend, and the stone arch through which the river flowed onward towards the volcano appeared. They had scarcely taken two steps farther when the earth trembled violently, and a huge fissure appeared between them and the arch; a purplish hand forced its way up out of the rock.

Another of those monsters.

Spyro glanced around:

"Cynder, to the left! That path! It's too narrow for that thing — hurry, follow me!" He darted towards a small opening in the trees, Cynder hot on his heels as the beast rose up out of the earth, roaring savagely. Spyro heard a horrible cracking sound as it whacked a tree with its enormous mace. But they were already well along the narrow path, and the thing couldn't follow. It bellowed its displeasure and proceeded to stomp up and down in front of the entrance.

Spyro and Cynder came to a halt about a hundred yards away.

"That was close," Cynder said, staring back at the thing. No sooner had she said the words than the earth trembled again, and this time Grublins – at least a dozen of them – popped up out of the charred soil.

"I had to say something," Cynder growled. Before Spyro could do anything, she stomped the ground, and suddenly the wind shifted, spinning violently into a cyclonic vortex that sucked up the Grublins, whirled them around vigorously for several seconds, and then smashed them into the trees. The sickening sound of the cracking of frail bones resonated through the air, and the little beasts slumped to the ground, a couple twitching feebly.

Just for good measure, Spyro stepped forward and bathed them in fire. The smell of roasted insectile flesh filled the already miasmic air, mingling with the sulfur smell of the volcanic ash. It was a hideous combination.

"Nice work," Spyro said to Cynder, giving her a small smile, which quickly vanished: She was staring behind him, a look of exasperation on her face; she pointed, and Spyro followed her gaze: The path they were on terminated in a dead end, an impassable wall of rock and tree, covered in needle-like projections, like calcified briers.

"Fantastic," she said flatly, "Now what? We can't go back to that thing…"

"Forget it," Spyro said, shaking his head; he looked up into the sky and located the spiraling cloud of ash that signaled the volcano that was their destination. Dropping his gaze straight down, he ended up staring at a wall of trees to his right.

"Step back," he warned Cynder; she obliged, and Spyro fired a blast of seismic energy into the wall: The trees blasted apart with devastating force, splinters of charred wood raining down as the conical blast of shimmering green light cleaved a path straight through the forest.

At the terminus of its deadly course, Spyro saw the stone archway in the river.

"Let's go," he muttered. Cynder said nothing. They set off again, moving quickly through the makeshift path all cluttered with broken calcified branches, finally coming to the shore of the river. The arch was about a dozen yards to their right.

Spyro could see the lava eddying and swirling beneath the arch, beyond which mountainous cliffs rose up on either side of the river, which turned rightward and vanished from sight.

"Guess we have to head that way," he murmured.

"Guess so — hope there aren't more wyverns," Cynder replied. They took off and flew past the arch, following the river through a winding mountain pass, which debouched onto a sort of valley full of lava. Spyro recognized it as the swamp territory immediately south of the Temple, where water flowing from the building had pooled into a sort of large well here.

Except now it was all searing lava, dotted with islands of charred earth. At the far end of the little valley was a sheer wall of rock studded with fumaroles and streaked with small cataracts of lava flowing from high above. Spyro and Cynder landed on one of the rock islands and looked around.

"There's the volcano," Cynder said, pointing towards the far end, where, indeed, above the lava cataracts, the volcano's spiraling ash cloud could be seen. Spyro could just barely discern the shape of the Temple crowning the ash.

"How're we gonna get up there?" he mused. He could feel the vicious churning of the volcanic winds: There was no way that they were flying up there.

"Look!" Cynder pointed to the left: There were ledges riddling the cliff face, rising slowly towards an overhang that was connected to a small stone bridge that presumably led to the volcano. Spyro followed the ledges backward with his gaze and spotted an access point: a step-like series of increasingly taller rock platforms, not far from them.

"That'll do," Spyro said.

"Spyro!" Cynder suddenly hissed; she was now pointing in the opposite direction; Spyro followed her gaze: A trio of huge, earthy-colored trolls was patrolling the rock islands far off to the right, leaping easily over the straits of lava separating them.

"We're not fighting them," Spyro said in a low voice, "Head for the cliffs, go!" They darted leftward, away from the patrols, jumping island-to-island until they reached the steps, which they ascended, mounting the ledges.

"Did they see us?" whispered Cynder, pausing and crouching low; Spyro followed suit and looked back: The trolls had paused, but at this distance, he couldn't make out their faces very well through the ash and couldn't tell if they had seen the two young dragons or if they were simply pondering their next move.

"Don't know," he answered her, "Hold still a sec — let's see if they move on." Cynder nodded, and they remained rooted to the spot, staring at the unmoving trolls. Spyro prayed that their helmets wouldn't flash in the volcanic light. After what felt like an eon, the trolls moved, retracing their patrol route.

Spyro and Cynder both breathed a sigh of relief.

"Okay," Spyro said softly, "let's keep moving. We're almost there." They continued to climb the ledges. They couldn't move very quickly: The ground was largely unstable, and there were places where it was obviously crumbling away — probably from erosion from the torrid volcanic winds.

They were about halfway up when Spyro glanced right and spotted a cloud of wyverns patrolling the skies.

"Wyverns!" Spyro hissed. Cynder had just been taking a cautious step forward, and at his utterance she slipped, and her paw struck a clod of loose charred earth; it disintegrated and fell away, and Cynder careened sideways, towards a deadly fall into the lava far below.

She let out a squeal; Spyro seized the scruff of her neck and yanked her back, furling a wing around her and slapping a paw across her mouth.

"Shh!" he breathed in her ear, pressing her close to him and sidling back against the rock wall. "Keep still — I've got you," he added, just in case she was worried about falling again. Cynder nodded very slowly. Spyro dropped his paw from her mouth. "Sorry about that," he whispered. Cynder smiled weakly at him.

"It's okay — d'you think they heard me?" She looked out towards the swarming group of wyverns. Spyro stared intently at them, but he couldn't really make sense of their movements. They appeared to be searching, but their paths were random, and they didn't appear to have taken notice of the two dragons on the ledge.

"I don't think so," Spyro whispered back, "Let's keep going — nice and careful." They continued at half pace, continually glancing to the right to make sure that the wyverns didn't spot them, redoubling their caution to make sure that they didn't step on any more loose ground.

Spyro could feel a nagging fear rising in him that the wyverns would spot them — how could they fight here on these narrow ledges? The winds were so strong that a single misstep would send them into the lake of fire below, and there was hardly any room to maneuver up here. If they were spotted…

Spyro shook his head. _Stop it! Focus on where you're putting your paws, moron!_

Despite his fears, they made it to the overhang without incident. The stone bridge they had seen indeed led to a small, square platform of rock, in turn connected to a much larger one. More disconcerting were the two heavily armed orcs standing guard at the opposite end of the bridge, brandishing their weapons as they advanced.

"It never ends, does it?" Cynder muttered.

"Let's take care of these guys quickly," Spyro said. They ran forward towards the bridge; one orc sprinted the length of the bridge and lifted its halberd to attack: Cynder opened her mouth and shot a cyclonic gust of wind straight into his chest, blasting the creature backward, sending its weapon spinning away as it overshot the platform and fell to its death.

"Guess I overdid it a little," Cynder remarked. Spyro couldn't help but chuckle. It was the first time either of them had laughed since they had entered the Burned Lands thirty-six hours before.

The second orc roared and approached; Spyro spat flames onto the halberd, causing it to glow white-hot, sending up plumes of steam as it seared the orc's flesh; it yowled and released the weapon. Cynder vanished in a cloud of shadows, reappearing behind the orc, her tail-blade slicing through the back of its knee, flooring it. Spyro spat more flames, this time engulfing the orc's whole body; it writhed and shrieked before careening sideways and falling off the bridge. Spyro crossed to Cynder.

"Did that seem a little too easy to you?" she asked.

"Yeah, but I think that _that's_ supposed to be the _real_ guard," Spyro answered grimly, pointing over her shoulder: At the far end of the larger rock platform, guarding a wide stone bridge that rose upward towards an updraft – evident from the swirling dust and ash caught in it – was a huge troll, beating its chest and roaring at them.

Spyro and Cynder crossed onto the small rock platform and paused at the bridge to the larger one.

"There's no going around him, is there?" Cynder asked.

"I don't think so," Spyro replied. They stood there for a moment, staring at the menacing troll, which simply glared back, refusing to move from its sentinel-like position. "Okay, here's my idea," Spyro said quietly, "You hit him with a Fear blast, I'll freeze him, and that'll buy us enough time for you to spit acid onto his knees, like you did that scorpion thing back a while ago. I'll get in his face and put fire in his eyes."

"And if he's not dead then?"

Spyro shrugged grimly: "Improvise." Cynder nodded.

"Okay."

"You ready?"

"Yeah."

"Then let's go!" They rocketed forward, crossing the bridge and closing the distance to the troll in a few seconds flat; Spyro broke left, took a deep breath, and let out a conical gust of frigid wind as Cynder flanked right and emitted a piercing blast of sound and shimmering red light.

The troll rocked as it was bombarded by the elements, careening sluggishly under the immobilizing influences of Ice and Fear; Cynder lunged in close and spat acid onto the beast's knees, darting away as the troll collapsed with a horrible, bloodcurdling roar of pain; it hit the ground with a crash, and Spyro was right there: He poured flames into the troll's face.

The beast bellowed its pain and fury, flailing its arms furiously. Spyro felt one of the blows catch him in the side and send him flying to his right; he landed hard on the stone.

"Spyro!" Cynder cried out; a second blow caught her unawares and sent her flying towards the bridge, where she hit the ground and slid dangerously towards the edge. Spyro bounced to his paws and raced over to her, in time to seize her and pull her away from the precipice.

He helped her to her paws.

"Ouch," she groaned, "Spyro…make the ground stop spinning, will you?"

"Are you okay?" Spyro asked tremulously; he was terrified that she was concussed. How would they deal with that?

"I…I think so." Suddenly the troll roared; Spyro spun to see it rise to its feet — despite the injuries to its knees, its face scorched and smoking, venomous hate in its eyes…

Spyro rounded on it, summoned up all the power he could, and let loose a blast of Fury; the amethyst bolt of light caught the troll in the chest, blasting it backward off its feet and sending it soaring backward through the air, bellowing as it vanished into the gale of dust and smoke.

He and Cynder stood there for several seconds, both breathing hard, looking around in fear that something else would pop up out of the ground to menace them.

Nothing did.

There was nothing but the howl of the wind and that fiendish, bloody light that marked nightfall in the Burned Lands.

"Are you okay?" Spyro asked Cynder again, "Can you move?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine, Spyro," she assured him.

"Let's get outta here," he said softly, helping her towards the bridge leading to the updraft. When they reached it, they spread their wings simultaneously, launched themselves into the air, and entered the swirling column of wind.

Instantly, Spyro could feel himself rocketing easily upward, soaring through the hellish clouds towards the Temple, all enshrouded in ghastly light and smoke. Cynder was right beside him as they rose higher and higher into the heavens, streaking inexorably towards Malefor…towards their destiny.

Spyro glanced back and watched as the Burned Lands vanished beneath a ribbon of smoke, ash, and dust.

There was no turning back now.


	4. resurgemus

**_IN UMBRĀ ARTIFICIS ĀTRĪ_**

"_resurgēmus_"

"We Shall Rise Again"

* * *

DIĒS ĪRAE, DIĒS ILLA

SOLVET SAECLUM IN FAVĪLLA

QUANTUS TREMOR EST FUTŪRUS

QUANDŌ IŪDEX EST VENTŪRUS

MORS STUPĒBIT, ET NĀTŪRA,

CUM RESURGET CREĀTŪRA

IŪDICANTĪ RESPŌNSŪRA

LĪBER SCRĪPTUS PRŌFERĒTUR

IN QUŌ TŌTUM CONTINĒTUR

UNDE MUNDUS IŪDICĒTUR

IŪDEX ERGO CUM SEDĒBIT

QUIDQUID LATET, APPĀRĒBIT

NĪL INULTUM REMANĒBIT

LACRIMŌSA DIĒS ILLA

QUĀ RESURGENT EX FAVĪLLA

IŪDICĀNDA CORDĒS REA

SED…

NŌBĪSCUM EST LŪX QUAE SALVAT

IN CORDIBUS NOSTRA ĀRDET

CALŌREM SUUM ĒMITTET

TŌTUS MUNDUS HĀC LŪCE TINGĒTUR

ET CUM IN TENEBRĀS DĒSCENDIMUS

FLAMMĪS NIGRĪS DĒVORĀTĪ

NŌN TIMĒMUS, QUOD CŌGNŌVIMUS:

AB ALĪS FĀTĪ AMŌRISQUE

CUM GAUDIŌ VICTŌRIAE PĀCISQUE

POSTRĒMŌ EX TENEBRĪS

RESURGĒMUS

* * *

Spyro and Cynder breached the final cloud layer, rising above the churning sea of ash and dust, emerging into a space of clear sky.

The air was thin and cold – an almost painfully sharp contrast to the hot, miasmic air of the Burned Lands far below – stirred by residual drafts from the volcanic maelstrom, but otherwise tranquil and almost heavenly. The sun was clearly visible: a blazing ball of orange sinking towards the sea of ash in the west, bathing the whole ether in eerie light.

Spyro saw innumerable islands of rock floating in the heavens before him, scattered at various elevations and distances from one another, of sizes ranging from a few square yards to enormous chunks of architecture. It pained him to see the Temple rent into little pieces – several of them forlornly covered in ivy and overgrown with grass – and spattered about, shorn of its majesty and dignity and replaced with a sad sense of emptiness.

At the same time, there was a note of peace to the calm, steady whine of the winds, an elegance in the emptiness. This was a cool void, not a chaotic one. This limbo was one of rest, not death, like the fiery one below.

Malefor didn't belong here.

Spyro could see the tower he had erected — judging from the looks of things, in the central space of the Temple: It was hovering probably several miles high in the air above the Temple proper, suspended by a cyclone. Undoubtedly they would have to find another updraft…

But not tonight: The sun was setting rapidly, and Spyro's body was aching with exhaustion; his lungs seared from having spent so long in the miasma of the Burned Lands and now being thrust into the clear, thin atmosphere of these floating islands. All he wanted was to go to sleep…to sleep for a week…for a year…for all of time…

"Let's try and find some shelter for the night," he called to Cynder; she nodded, and they flew towards a large island housing the remains of a tower and part of a wall. Part of the tower wall was collapsed, exposing the upper floors, so they landed there and proceeded cautiously inside.

They went through a door and found themselves in a hallway that wasn't deteriorated and so was shielded from the ethereal winds. They paused, and Spyro looked around: Something was familiar…

"We're in the south wing," he muttered, "I remember this place…hey, there's a kitchen near here!" Right then, both their stomachs growled loudly. For the first time in days, they blushed.

"Guess we should check that out," Cynder murmured, glancing away so that he wouldn't see her black scales turning pinkish. He grinned.

"Yeah, I suppose. I think it's this way." He led the way down the hall and to the left, following the corridors on a whim, taking the path that seemed most familiar.

It was a bizarre feeling, walking through this place where he'd lived for months and months and months, and seeing it so deserted and gloomy — with halls that, at times, were partially degraded by time and war. There were scorch marks and bloodstains here and there, but even scarier were the halls that were utterly undisturbed: It felt as though those halls were haunted by the destruction that had _yet_ to befall them, as though instead of bearing physical scars, they bore spiritual ones — like they were cursed…

They found the kitchen: a spacious, circular room with several deep cabinets that were still – miraculously – well-stocked with preserved foodstuffs. Spyro had never really enjoyed the taste of dried rabbit (particularly not three years old), but right now, as he and Cynder tore into it, it may as well have been ambrosia.

They ate quickly, in silence, both of them fearing that something would leap out of a shadowy corner and attack them while their guards were down. There was a small window high on the western wall, through which a beam of sanguinaceous sunlight was streaming. Spyro could tell that darkness would be falling fast.

When they'd finished eating, they simply sat wordlessly for several minutes, listening to the profound quietude that seemed to envelop everything up here. While in the Burned Lands everything had been consumed by fury and sound, here all was still and cold.

Somehow, Spyro wasn't sure he liked it any better up here.

"I suppose we should find somewhere to pass the night," Cynder whispered. It felt wrong to speak too loudly. Spyro shook his head.

"I think we oughta just stay here."

"Probably best," Cynder agreed tiredly, "Stay near the supplies…" _Yeah, that's it…_

Truth be told, Spyro really wanted to stay because he couldn't bear the thought of having to get up and go searching for somewhere else. Plus, if he remembered right, there were few dormitories in the southern wing…

"Well, we can't just sit out here in the open," Cynder said, looking around. "How about that pantry? It looks pretty big." Spyro followed her gaze: It was an herb and vegetable pantry, designed to keep the ingredients cooled and filtered.

"Yeah — good idea…" He struggled to his paws, and they walked over to the pantry and opened the door. Spyro was glad that they weren't jumped: He didn't feel like he had the strength to fight anymore.

The walls were lined in shelves flanking a single aisle, with no windows and just the one door. The shelves were mostly empty, covered in dust, sporting only a few aged jars with stale herbs inside. Cynder went to the back of the pantry and lay down; Spyro closed the door, and they were plunged into complete darkness.

It took a few heart-pounding seconds for his eyes to adjust, and then Spyro crossed over to Cynder and lay down beside her.

It was a close fit – the pantry wasn't huge – and it was cold, so before either of them knew what they were doing, they had huddled up next to each other.

When they noticed, they caught each other's eye, blushed, and scooted apart a bit.

"Sorry," Spyro mumbled, his face burning hotter than the Burned Lands that they'd just left. It felt like now that they were out of that hellish place, the rules of propriety had been reestablished. Cynder laughed softly.

"You're okay," she assured him, "Besides, we might die tomorrow, so I don't think a little closeness'll do any harm." Silence. "I…I'm sorry: That was terrible…morbid…" It was Spyro's turn to laugh.

"No…you're right," he whispered; he moved back to his original position, their flanks pressed against one another. "We _might_ die tomorrow," he agreed quietly. That thought consumed his mind, and he found himself staring at her, gazing into her lovely eyes, wondering if the light gleaming there would soon be snuffed out…

Before he knew it, tears were fogging his own eyes so much that he couldn't see; he blinked, and a little gasp of sorrow escaped him.

"Spyro, what's wrong?" Cynder asked him, alarmed. He shook his head and waited until the tears had rolled far enough out of his eyes so that he could see again, and then he looked her straight in the eye.

"I…" He wasn't sure how to say it: It was the same thought he'd had yesterday as they journeyed through the Burned Lands, except now it was further inflamed by the possibility of her impending death. What could he say?

But he had to say something: She deserved that much, and he might not get another chance.

They _might_ die tomorrow…or tonight.

"I…I'm so sorry, Cynder," he burst out, the words forcing more tears from his eyes, slurring his voice and clouding his vision once more, "I'm so sorry…for everything that's happened. It's all because of me…everything…it's all because of me. Everything Malefor did to you…it's all my fault, all my fault…" He couldn't say the words enough, but his lungs seemed to have stopped working. It was all he could do to keep breathing. Water was still cascading from his eyes.

Cynder didn't say anything — he couldn't tell if she was shocked or if she was simply staring at him pityingly; his eyes were still too full of tears to permit of vision. He composed himself a little and then, with a supreme amount of effort, forced himself to keep going:

"Y'know…sometimes I wish that I could use my powers and go back in time…and stop myself from ever being born. Without me, none of this would've happened."

"Spyro."

That was all she said. Just his name.

It was enough.

He stopped crying, blinked his tears away, and looked up:

She was gazing at him with something in her eyes that he couldn't define. There was compassion there, sorrow too — and pain, a pain that tore through him like fire.

"Spyro," she repeated softly, "If you had never been born…this world would be in complete darkness right now. Malefor would have won. And I…I would be right beside him.

"Don't you see? I'm not the one who got cheated by destiny: You did. You were cheated right from the start, slated to play a role you never asked for, a role you could never have been ready for, with an impossible amount riding on you.

"I? I got a second chance – because of _you_ – and you got zero. You never had a choice."

"Everybody has a choice," Spyro countered.

"Yeah," Cynder said with a warm but wan smile, "but you know as well as I that even though you could've chosen to walk away…you wouldn't have, not for anything in this world…or any other. You were _meant_ for this…_born_ for this.

"And as for it all being your fault," she added a bit more strongly, "Malefor made his own choice. The blame lies with him."

"Sounds like splitting hairs," Spyro mumbled honestly.

"Sometimes the line is as thin as a hair, Spyro," she said, "Take it from me: I've lived in the limbo within that hair." They fell silent; Spyro was grateful for her words – grateful couldn't _begin_ to describe it – but he still felt a stab of pain deep in his heart every time he thought about it. Even if they survived the coming battle…what then?

Would he have to walk into a new world and confront those who had lost family members because he was gone for three years and couldn't confront Malefor from the get-go? Would he have to explain to them why their blood had been spilt in his name?

He could taste the blood now, hear the death screams — thousands of them, roaring in his ears like a gale; his head was pounding, his heart tearing apart, and the tears were gone, vaporized by the heat of shame and despair…

He could do nothing but tremble.

Cynder inched a little closer to him, leaned in, and started whispering in his ear:

"You know, Spyro, no matter what happens tomorrow, I want you to know: I'm right here beside you. You're not alone." He looked at her: There was a warmth in her eyes that cleared the gloomy fog in his head and relieved some of the horrible pain in his heart.

That would have to be enough.

He touched her cheek very tenderly with his nose.

"Thanks, Cynder," he managed to say thickly. Cynder smiled and nodded.

"Let's get some sleep, shall we?"

"Yeah…" They laid their heads down, and Spyro closed his eyes.

It was hardly necessary: The darkness enveloping them was almost complete, with nothing but the scanty crack beneath the door allowing dull, fiery light to filter in. He could hardly see three feet in front of him, could barely make out Cynder's obsidian form in the shadows.

But he could sense her: her warm body pressed against his in the cold of the gathering night, her breath gently stirring the stale air of the pantry; her heartbeat ticking like a steady metronome.

Spyro sat there for a long moment, savoring each sensation, wondering if this was the last time he would ever feel that warmth, ever hear that breath, ever feel the beat of that heart next to him.

This time tomorrow…would there be a tomorrow?

Even if there was…would he be there to see it?

Would Cynder?

That thought was most painful of all. It felt like everything he'd ever fought for would be meaningless if she weren't given a second chance — a real chance to start over.

Ignitus had died for that. And if necessary…_he_ would die for that, too.

_Just let her live_, Spyro begged the night, opening his eyes and glancing at Cynder, who was slumbering next to him. _You can have me; just let her live…please…_

He would've said more, but what else was there to say? There was an infinity in those words. He may as well have said nothing: His heart was already wailing the most soulful song in all the world, a song for which there were no words, yet a song which captured an eternity of words.

Who was he talking to? To whom did his heart lament?

He couldn't have said…but he continued his spectral discourse for what felt like eons.

It was probably only half an hour.

Either way, sleep did not come to him: His mind was full of the stuff of the heavens surrounding them, smiling down on them through the roof above — perhaps for the last time. Would the stars above be welcoming them into their folds soon? Before the celestial bodies made their next circuit?

Spyro felt like he had one paw here on Earth (what was left of it) and one paw beyond the veil…wherever it led. And he was scared that he was going to drag Cynder across, too.

Just because he was doomed to take that plunge didn't mean that she had to.

But Ignitus had said that their destinies were now intertwined. Did that mean that she was now inexorably chained to him — by more than the simple magical chain with which Malefor had had them bound? Was she cursed to bear the brunt of his destiny?

Was he pulling her to her death?

That thought…that thought was enough to tear his heart to shreds and set the pieces on fire. It felt like there was an enormous hand crushing his chest. He could hardly breathe. It was all he could do to not gasp and shudder.

Cynder was right: He hadn't chosen this path. But neither had she.

Or had they? Had they both chosen this? Like she said, they had had the choice, but neither had chosen to walk away.

Spyro shook his head: It was all too confusing right now. Maybe someday he'd understand these peculiarities of destiny…

But the one thought he couldn't shake was that maybe…maybe he could've done something differently. Maybe there had been a way to spare her some of this, a way for him to take the hits alone, to not drag her into the crucible of fate.

Had he made a mistake? Was it _really_ all his fault?

He prayed it wasn't: The shame would be enough to kill him.

Spyro lay awake for a long while, listening to Cynder's breathing, slow and steady, her heartbeat, slow and steady, and watching the slow and steady recession of daylight as night fell completely, and everything became enshrouded in velvety black.

It seemed like everything was slow and steady except for his thoughts: They just flew around in his head, flashing from one thing to another like lightning. At the same time, there was a horrible, sluggish continuity to them all, like the menacing expanse of clouds that heralded a coming storm, as though the miscellany of his meditations was woven on a common loom of melancholy.

That was the only way he knew how to describe it: It wasn't a poignant emotion, like despair or grief, but a dull, oppressive one, a smothering one, an asphyxiating one.

In a moment of absolute bleakness, he wondered if it wouldn't be so much simpler if they could just die in their sleep…fade away into oblivion. That would afford them something that he couldn't remember last experiencing:

Peace.

Spyro sighed. He couldn't help it. All of the hell he had suffered in the last few weeks…it was all imbued in that sigh.

"Spyro?" said Cynder suddenly, in a low, quiet voice, her eyes still closed. "Are you awake?"

"Yeah," he whispered back, surprised that his voice was even and normal, "I'm surprised you are — I thought you fell asleep a while ago."

"No…I've just been thinking…"

The way she had said that made him absolutely certain that the same otherworldly gloom that had been plaguing him for perhaps the last hour had seized her heart as well.

"Yeah…me too," he said meaningfully. They sat in silence awhile.

Somehow, the fact that she was awake too comforted Spyro: Even though he was terrified that he would be the death of her yet, he was grateful for her presence by his side. He hated to admit it – because it substantiated his fear that he had indeed dragged her into this hell – but he didn't think that he could have survived the torment of the last few days without her.

She was the one thing keeping him going. And knowing that she was lying here, awake in the darkness too, the same sepulchral thoughts plaguing her mind…somehow he felt more connected to her than ever before.

Their destinies were intertwined, according to Ignitus. For the first time, Spyro could actually _feel_ that connection. It was…indescribable.

What words could do justice to a bond that transcended flesh and blood, words and deeds, hearts and minds — transcended all but the loftiest of all things?

He said nothing. He laid his tail gently across Cynder's, slightly nervous that she would find the gesture intrusive.

She didn't.

In fact, he thought that she actually sidled just a little bit closer to him. Maybe he imagined it.

Maybe he didn't.

"Y'know," she spoke up softly after a long few minutes, "this kinda reminds me of that second night after Convexity…you remember?" Spyro smiled in the dark.

"Yeah…" he whispered back.

The night of Cynder's first full day free of the Dark Master…that was a night he realized only just now that he would never forget: They hadn't slept a wink.

Spyro couldn't imagine the ordeal she had suffered those first weeks following her rebirth (that, in essence, was what it had been), trying to find her place in a world that hated her, trying to relearn all those things that all children learned through the time of which she had been robbed…

…trying to forgive herself for all the things Malefor had forced her to do.

Spyro had tried to help her as much as he could, but there was no way he could have understood what she had felt. He had been uprooted from his old life, too, sure, but nothing like Cynder. He had done his best to help her, though:

That night, she couldn't sleep. Her mind had simply been too full of a vicious miscellany of ever-escalating worries. He had stayed up all night with her, talking to her — just talking: telling her stories about him and Sparx in the swamps, about the funny way Volteer had of rambling on about things, the even funnier way Cyril had of jeering at him — all sorts of random things.

He had kept talking until the sun had poked up over the eastern forests. He could still hear her laugh, still remembered how he had laughed with her…

That felt like a lifetime ago.

"I never thanked you for that," Cynder said quietly. Spyro blinked; that caught him off-guard.

"Huh?"

"I never thanked you," she repeated.

"Cynder, you don't — "

"Yes, I do," she interjected calmly, "You don't know how important that was to me. So…thank you, Spyro." He wasn't sure what to say; before he even knew what he was doing, the words rose to his lips:

"It was important to me, too, Cynder." He realized it was true: That night…that was the moment that he really started caring about her, looking out for her — that night was the reason he had chased her when she'd left the Temple, why he had followed her to the Well of Souls…

…why she was lying here beside him right now.

Spyro felt his breath catch in his chest, but he contained the rising sob. It was his turn to subtly sidle a little bit closer to her.

It was a poignant irony that the very thing that had bonded him to her was the same thing that had tethered her to him. It had catalyzed everything, everything that had led to this moment, this final night before confronting the Dark Master who had cursed the both of them in different ways.

That night had led directly to this one.

_All my fault…_

_Stop it! It's over — no point regretting now_. Well, _that_ was true, he supposed…

It didn't help; as he finally drifted off to sleep – it could have been minutes later…or hours – the one thing that comforted him was this:

Cynder's heart was beating yet.

* * *

They awoke early, just before the sun rose, and ate quickly and quietly, like they had the previous night. Spyro could tell that both of them were wondering if it was their last meal.

They set off, heading towards the menacing spire that Malefor had erected to crown the Temple in his evil. It wasn't too hard to miss, so at least they knew they were heading the right way…

It was a bizarre, otherworldly feeling traversing these floating islands: They hopped in silence from one to the next, often seeing nothing on those islands but grass and some remnants of architecture. Occasionally they would find an islet that sported a piece of the Temple that they recognized, and memories would come rushing up to the surface of their minds, and they would have to spend a couple minutes quashing them.

They seemed to be climbing steadily upward as they approached the tower – and their destiny – as if the Temple had been uplifted in a sort of conical fashion, the central structures above the outlying ones.

Spyro didn't like it: Everything he'd ever learnt about military tactics dictated that possession of the high ground was a supreme advantage, and sure he and Cynder could fly, but what good was that when there were so many angles of attack?

He was plagued by a constant fear of some sharpshooter orc putting a crossbow bolt through Cynder's eye as they walked along…

_Stop it!_ he upbraided himself. _Calm down you id — !_

"Spyro!" Cynder hissed, grabbing him and yanking him back.

"What?" he asked breathlessly, adrenaline shooting through his blood as he glanced around furiously, seeking a threat…

He saw nothing.

"You almost walked right over the edge!" Cynder said quietly, staring at him as though he had two heads. Spyro looked down: Sure enough, the island ended barely two feet in front of where he'd been standing a moment before.

"Oh…"

"Are you okay, Spyro?" There was a good question…

"Not really, no," he said honestly. There was no point lying. She approached him and touched his shoulder with one paw.

"Can you do this?" she asked. Another good question…

"I don't have a choice," Spyro said firmly, more to assure himself than to assure her. She stared at him for a long time and then finally nodded.

They moved on.

At least now they could see the sun: It was climbing almost lazily into the sky to their right as they trekked northward towards the spire. It was amazing how nice it was to feel its rays on their scales, to know that at least one pleasant thing remained in this world. In the Burned Lands, Spyro realized that they had been infected with the fear that the entire world had descended into that sort of lugubrious horror, a fiery pit from which there was no escape.

But no. There was still hope…

That thought was just enough to energize him; they redoubled their pace.

Nevertheless, as they plodded along, island-hopping their way ever closer to Malefor, Spyro thought he could hear menacing whispers at the edge of his hearing. They seemed to come from the grass, from the stones, from the air itself, as though this whole place were possessed of some malevolent spirit.

It sounded like the same whispers that he heard very loudly when he was around Dark Crystals. Or was this Malefor himself, trying to wheedle his way into his mind?

He wondered if Cynder could hear them.

He opened his mouth to ask her, but then the earth trembled, and an arrow shot past Spyro's head, pinging off a nearby rock façade. He looked up and saw two orcs on a neighboring island, with Grublins now emerging from the ground in front of him and Cynder.

"I'll take the orcs!" Cynder shouted; she launched herself into the air, and before Spyro could make sure that she wasn't shot with an arrow midflight, the Grublins were on him: One leaped onto his helmet and started beating it like a drum, sending an annoying ringing through his ears; one approached his leg with a crude-looking dagger.

He kicked the foul beast away, shaking his head to loose its companion before drowning a third in flames. But a dozen more had appeared out of nowhere and were advancing on him; he backed away, trying to keep them all in sight, and felt his tail make contact with the rock wall.

Instantly, the Grublins lunged at him, coming in fast from five different angles at once; he spat more flames to try and keep them back, but one mounted the ribbon of fire and shot for his head, club in hand; he dodged its charge, sending it smacking with a sickening thud into the rock before seizing it in his jaws and hurling it over the edge of the island.

The flames had dissipated, and the Grublins were advancing again; he shot more fire at them, but they were getting wise to that and half of them evaded the attack. As they approached, he bombarded them with a storm of ice bolts, but there were too many for that to work: The ones that weren't drowned in deadly shards swooped towards him, their little, wicked weapons in hand —

Then the wind kicked up, sucking the Grublins into a whirlwind at whose center Spyro saw Cynder: She must have dealt with the orcs…

The winds cascaded outward, sending the Grublins flying into the ethereal abyss; Cynder landed lightly on the ground and came over to him.

"Are you all right?"

"No," Spyro said quietly. Now that he thought about it…why hadn't he used lightning? It would have jumped from one Grublin to another — he could have taken them all at once. Or used his Earth powers to encase himself in rock and escape from being backed against the wall?

_What's wrong with me? That should've been _easy!

Cynder was staring at him concernedly.

"I'm not hurt," he assured her, "I just…I shouldn't've needed your help there." There was a moment of tense silence. Spyro's face burned. "Sorry," he mumbled, "that didn't come out the way I meant it…"

"I know what you meant," she replied gently, "Let's just keep going. It doesn't look like those things had reinforcements…" They moved on, but now on top of the dark whispers in his head, Spyro was berating himself. _Stupid, stupid, stupid…_

He kept that up until he'd made himself miserable again, at which point he realized it wasn't worth it and dropped the matter.

They continued making their way towards the tower as the sun rose steadily higher; when it had reached its noonday crest, Spyro noticed something: The whispers in his head were stronger now, more material, and they sounded as though they were coming from a single direction rather than from the air itself…

"Hold up, Cynder," he whispered; she paused and looked at him quizzically. They were passing through a half demolished upper corridor suspended on stone columns; below and to their left was a small rampart — probably overlooking a former courtyard. That was the direction whence the whispers were coming.

"I sense something," he added very quietly, "Follow me." She obeyed as he floated gently down to the rampart and peeked over the edge into the courtyard: There was a whole crowd of orcs and other minions littering the courtyard, which was mostly intact, though overgrown. They were carting around open boxes of crossbow bolts, blades of all sorts, and what appeared to be building materials — bricks, mortar, and the like.

On the far right side, there was a cart full of Dark Crystals.

Instantly, the moment Spyro laid eyes on it, the whispers in his head became screams of fury, rising in demoniacal tones to bloodcurdling shrieks of blackest evil, pounding in his ears, burning in his blood, sending ripples of pain through his whole body.

He gasped and slumped to the ground.

"Spyro?" Cynder hissed, alarmed, "What's going on?"

"D-Dark…Crystals…" he answered through gritted teeth, closing his eyes: His vision had just swum with a haze of fiendish purple light. A voice – a new one, far eviler than the crystals' – spoke up in a silky, deadly tone that rumbled like the volcano far below…

_Spyro…Spyro…come to me, my young, purple friend…_

_Malefor_, Spyro thought. He recognized the voice from Warfang. Somehow, the Dark Crystals opened some sort of psychic bridge between them.

_Yes, young one. It is I. Come…your destiny awaits! _The voice cackled maniacally, adding its sinister tone to the cacophony in his head. With a supreme effort, Spyro muted him — mostly: He could still hear him, as though from a distance, whispering evil thoughts in the dark recesses of his mind.

He opened his eyes.

"It's Malefor," he whispered to Cynder, whose eyes widened, "He knows we're here."

"But — how?"

"The crystals," Spyro groaned, still fighting the screams reverberating inside him, "They're…some kind of connection…between me and him…"

"Then we'll destroy them," Cynder said matter-of-factly.

"No!" Spyro protested, "There're too many guards down there…let's just move away…quickly! There's no time to lose…" Cynder stared at him. Perhaps she recognized in his eyes some trace of the haunted, hunted state that she knew all too well…

Did she hear Malefor whispering to her out of the gloom, too? All the time?

If she did, she made no indication.

"Okay, let's go." She helped him to his paws, and they left, taking great care not to be spotted.

But as they traveled ever onward, Spyro could still hear the Dark Master in his head; his voice would start off as a barely discernible, sinister whisper, and then rise to the point that Spyro would involuntarily glance about, terrified that Malefor had come out to meet them — but no. They were alone.

And still his voice remained, taunting, tormenting, tantalizing. It took everything Spyro had to repress that voice. He didn't want to hear the words it was saying… At least that horrible, unearthly pain was gone — that seemed to have been a direct result of those Dark Crystals.

The islands were still climbing steadily higher, but Spyro was no longer worried about enemies ambushing them from above: All of his concentration was going into tuning out Malefor's voice. He stumbled several times over loose stones, broken pottery — once a huge torch that sent him face-planting into the grass.

Every time, Cynder helped him back up while he muttered about his silliness; he could see worry in her green eyes, but she didn't say anything.

That made him feel even more ashamed of himself.

Still they trekked on in silence.

The sun was about halfway towards the horizon when they finally came to an enormous island that seemed to house the remains of a vast courtyard: In front of them was a wide but short stretch of soft grass, terminating in a huge façade that was mostly intact. In the center was a pair of very large, reinforced doors, flanked by a pair of bowl-like, unlit torches.

The tower was close: It appeared that they were right at its base. There was probably an updraft right beyond these doors…

"It's beautiful up here," Cynder said. It was awkward: Spyro suspected that she'd wanted to say it all day, but something had stopped her. Maybe the spectral quietude that pervaded everything here. Maybe his own terseness — or clumsiness.

"That tower…" he said flatly, "There's gotta be an updraft past these doors." Another awkward pause.

"Thanks for ruining the moment," Cynder joked. He could tell that she meant it good-naturedly, but it still stung him…because he realized how cold he'd just been. He turned to her.

"Cynder…I'm sorry, that was…" He wasn't sure how to express what was going through his head; uncapping his emotions seemed to make Malefor's voice stronger, and now his head was spinning as he fought to say what he needed to say.

He couldn't: He was possessed of an overwhelming urge to vomit.

Apparently, Cynder noticed: "Spyro, what's wrong?"

"M-Malefor," he managed to croak out, blinking heavily and, with a supreme effort, quelling the Dark Master's sinister voice, "He's in my head…I've been hearing him for the last couple hours."

"I know," Cynder said softly.

"You do?" Cynder grimaced.

"I spent years listening to that voice in my head, Spyro." Her gaze darkened slightly. "I know that look when I see it. Besides," she added a bit more gently, managing a smile, "you don't trip that easily so many times for no reason." Spyro couldn't help but blush.

"You gonna be all right?" she asked more seriously. He tried to think about that, but he just found himself staring back into her eyes: In those emerald orbs he could just barely see a reflection of his own amethyst ones, and behind those he thought he saw the waxy, sinister flicker of the Dark Master's golden ones —

_Stop! Just…focus on her eyes_. He did: The more he stared at those green eyes, the weaker Malefor's voice became. Cynder was waiting patiently for his answer.

He smiled.

"Yeah, I think so," he answered her finally.

She smiled, and Malefor's voice vanished completely.

"Then let's get those doors open," she said matter-of-factly; they approached the doors, and Cynder tried to push them open.

They didn't budge. Spyro tried next, and then the both of them together, but the doors still wouldn't move an inch.

That's when Spyro spotted the torches again. On a whim, he lit them with two quick spurts of fire. There was a pair of weird rushing sounds, and then flames burst overhead; Spyro looked up and saw jets of fire coming out of two dragon heads carved into the stone several feet above the doors.

"Figures," he muttered. Cynder looked up and then rolled her eyes.

"I can hear Sparx now…'why not a simple lock and key?'…" She trailed off, blushed, scuffed her paw, and then muttered: "Sorry, Spyro, that was…that was tactless." Spyro shook his head, even though the mention of his brother had caused his heart to twist a little in his chest.

"It's okay, Cynder," he said gently, "I thought the same thing." She still looked uncomfortable, so he moved on: "Looks like there're six more torches around here somewhere." Indeed, there were six more identical dragon heads, such that all eight together were arranged in two columns of four, the bottom row now spewing fire in response to their corresponding torches' ignition.

"Then I guess we'd better get started," Cynder said. Then her eyes widened. "Spyro, look out!" Before he could move, she tackled him, sending them both rolling away to the side as bolts of dark energy struck the ground where he had just been standing.

They leaped to their paws, and Spyro caught sight of those eerie-looking skeletal things with crystal swords that seemed to be Malefor's honor guard of sorts. There were three advancing quickly.

One of them lifted its sword and fired another bolt of darkness at Spyro; he rolled aside and came up spitting fire, but the thing's sword cleaved the jet of flame easily. It charged forward, swinging its weapon as it came, and Spyro backed away carefully, stringing it along:

_C'mon…c'mon — bit closer…_ He led it towards the edge of the island, where finally, a few feet from where the grass vanished into open sky, he stopped and let the skeleton come to him; he saw the sword coming in high, a horizontal slash aiming to decapitate him.

Spyro ducked under the blade and darted through the gap between the skeleton's arm and hip, coming up behind it; he slashed his tail through its knee and threw his weight against its back, sending it careening over the edge. He didn't have time to watch it spinning away into oblivion before Cynder shouted:

"Spyro! Six o'clock!" He turned in time to leap away as another bolt of dark energy flew past. The skeleton that had fired it advanced on him while Cynder fought its companion. It fired more bolts as it came, and Spyro was hard-pressed to dodge them all.

_Enough of this!_ As he evaded the next bolt, he slammed a paw into the ground, setting the earth to shaking violently, knocking the skeleton off its balance and sending the next stream of bolts harmlessly skyward.

Spyro bounded forward, cloaking himself in fire and catching the skeleton with a flaming tackle squarely to the chest, sending it flying backward, trailing ribbons of fire and smoke. Spyro darted forward as it tried to recover, using his paw to pin its sword hand to the ground as he sheathed his tail in shimmering rock and slammed it down on the thing's face like a hammer.

He heard a horrible sound as its bones were crushed beneath his blow, and it stopped moving. Spyro took a couple steps back and tried not to be sick: The skeleton's face was a mass of white powder and some foul dark purple liquid that resembled blood and smelled like rotting corpses, with wisps of steam curling up lazily from the gore —

Then he felt himself knocked to the ground by a blow to the head that sent stars popping up in front of his eyes; he rolled onto his back just as the third skeleton landed on him, sending his breath swooshing out of his lung; it lifted its sword, but just then, a stream of blue-black shadows engulfed it:

The thing dropped its sword and convulsed for a few seconds before exploding in a plume of smoky, blackish shadows and a shrill cry that hovered at the edge of hearing like the wail of a distant banshee —

And then Cynder was on top of him, breathing hard. She had materialized out of the shadows.

"Thanks," he said to her, still trying to reorient himself after that whack to the head.

"Sure thing," she replied, winded; she looked worried. "Is your head okay? You're bleeding." Spyro hadn't noticed the little trickle of blood oozing out from under his helmet on the left side of his head. _Oops…_

"Yeah, I think I'm okay," he said; the nausea was receding, and he could see fine, and the pain in his head was localized to the one spot where he'd been hit. He didn't think he was concussed…he _hoped_ he wasn't concussed — that was the _last_ thing they needed…

"They're all gone," Cynder continued, looking around nervously, "but we've still gotta find those torches…" A few seconds passed. Spyro cleared his throat awkwardly.

"Um…Cynder…?"

"Yeah?"

"…you're still on top of me?"

"Oh!" Cynder's face reddened so fast that it looked like she had hemorrhaged; she let him up, and Spyro couldn't help but grin a little.

"Looks like there's a lot of broken architecture scattered around here," he said, fighting to keep his voice normal and not giggle at the look on her face, "I'll bet the torches we need are somewhere in what's left of those buildings. Cynder nodded, still blushing fiercely.

"I suppose — let's hope Malefor hasn't smashed them…" she murmured.

"Hey, I see one!" Spyro said suddenly, pointing: Sure enough, atop a broken wall on an island about fifty yards off to the left, he could just see the shape of a torch, sitting on one the crenulations in the wall. They flew over to it, and Spyro lit it with a spurt of fire. They turned back and saw a third dragon head over the door begin to spew flames.

"Well, that was pretty easy," Cynder remarked, "Let's hope the others are that easy to find…"

They weren't: For the next hour, they trudged all over the place, looking high and low, up and down, and finding only three of the remaining five torches. Two stubbornly remained missing — and it was nearing sunset. They paused to rest in a little pavilion atop the remains of a tower.

"Where could they _be?_" Cynder groaned, slumping against a pillar. Spyro shook his head in tiredness and frustration.

"I dunno…but those crystals gave me the creeps." Two of the three torches that they had found had been covered in Dark Crystals. Every time they had gone near them, the whispers in Spyro's head had grown to a horrendous, earth-shaking volume, and he had become terrified that Malefor would break through the barrier that he had imposed and start murmuring in the back of his mind again.

But they had managed to break the crystals and light the torches without incident.

"No kidding," Cynder agreed. He once again wondered if she could hear the Dark Master's voice, too, when they approached those cursed pieces of rock.

Should he ask her?

He decided against it: It would only broach that unseemly topic further…but…

"Hey," he said, suddenly, "I might have an idea."

"I'm all ears."

"Those crystals…they resonate with some psychic link between me and Malefor. Maybe – if I'm careful – I can track the connection backward and find them."

"Assuming that the last two torches are blocked by crystals _and_ that you don't open up your mind to the Dark Master again. It's too risky!" Cynder objected strongly.

"We don't have much of a choice," Spyro argued grimly, "There's no time to spare — Ignitus estimated that we only had three days before the Destroyer completed its circuit, and today is the third day!"

"But…" Cynder's voice trailed off in frustration. She stared at him for a moment and then sighed. "Fine. But be careful, okay?" Spyro nodded and then closed his eyes.

He started slowly, letting his senses expand outward like a bubble, washing over Cynder and the stones and the grass around them. He encompassed the pavilion and then flooded his perception out further, to the whole island. He was hoping he'd find the torches without having to connect to those crystals, but it didn't seem that luck would have it that way…

Spyro took a mental deep breath and broke the barrier: Instantly, he could hear the whispers rise up in volume like a tide of boiling lava from the crater of a just unplugged volcano; he screwed up his closed eyes and focused on the whispers, trying to ignore what they were saying – in some hideous tongue that no being alive would ever understand – and instead locate where they were coming from.

As before, the very air itself seemed imbued with their siren's song; the stones cried out, the blades of grass sang in the mild breeze that, too, was chanting to the crystals' devilish music.

Then Spyro heard Malefor: a deep, sinister voice in a chorus of demons. He felt fear burn like bile in his throat; his chest constricted, and he could hardly breathe.

He felt Cynder touch his shoulder gently. Had she sensed something?

Perhaps.

Either way, her touch seemed to send pulses of a different kind of music through the air, rending the hellish aria and quelling the Dark Master's voice. Spyro focused harder, and now it seemed like the whispers – for they had again reduced to whispers – were changing somehow, becoming denser in two directions than elsewhere. He followed the density gradient backwards to its sources: two torches capped in the fiendish black gems.

_Where are you?_ Spyro asked them. They almost seemed to answer:

_Come to us…_ He shivered and shook his head minutely. Cynder's touch grew stronger, and the whispers quieted further.

After a minute's more investigation, he opened his eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath — as though he had just come up from deep water. The whispers had retreated to the edge of his mind, and Cynder was standing there, one paw on his shoulder, staring at him concernedly.

"You were like a zombie," she whispered, "You went all cold, and you were twitching and moving your lips like you wanted to say something." Spyro shuddered: Had his body been unconsciously chanting to the music too? He shook his head.

"I found the torches," he managed to say; his voice was dry and cracked, "Follow me."

"Spyro, wait," Cynder said, cutting him off, "I want you to promise me something."

"Huh? What?" That caught him off-guard — and why did she look so intense?

"When you went under just a moment ago," she said quietly, "Your whole body…I could _feel_ the warmth flooding out of it. You were like…" She paused, swallowed, and continued: "You looked exactly how I felt when Malefor possessed me. He didn't always control me remotely, y'know. Sometimes he would actually _enter_ me…crawl around in my scales… You had that same look on your face that I know I had then.

"I want you to promise me that you'll never open your mind up to him again — no matter what?" Spyro was speechless: The intensity in her eyes had struck him dumb; she was staring at him unwaveringly, her eyes full of green fire, and there was a mixture of fear, compassion, and fury roiling in those orbs.

"Okay," he said quietly, touching her shoulder like she had just touched his, "I promise." They stared at each other for a moment, and then they walked on silently, Spyro leading the way. The first torch wasn't far: on an islet barely a dozen square yards floating off the southern edge of the one they were on. Spyro and Cynder glided towards it, and as it came in sight, Spyro could hear the whispers of the Dark Crystal covering the torch rising in his ears.

As she had with the other two, Cynder took the lead and fired a bolt of Fury energy straight into the black gem, blasting it to pieces with a shrill _bang_, and the whispers all rose up in a howl of agony — and then were abruptly silenced. Spyro lit the torch, and the two of them paused, hovering over the islet.

"The last torch's on a strip of island northwest of here," Spyro said.

"Then let's go," Cynder replied, "I don't wanna get caught by wyverns…" They set off again, weaving through the islands, keeping an eye out for ambushes, and in a couple minutes, the island came in sight: It was little more than a floating wall, angled slightly downward, with a little dais halfway down where the torch sat, capped with crystals.

As they flew over, Spyro spotted more skeleton warriors at the far end: Their swords began to glow with a blackish light.

"Look out!" he shouted, and he and Cynder veered out of the way as bolts of darkness lanced through the air where they had been; they landed, and the skeletons raced towards them.

"I'm sick of these things!" Cynder snarled; she opened her mouth and launched a cyclonic blast of wind that parted the skeletons as though some enormous pair of hands had swept them aside, flinging them over the edge of the wall.

Spyro blinked and smiled as Cynder advanced towards the crystal and blasted it apart with Fury. She turned back to him and cocked her head.

"What?" she asked confusedly. Spyro couldn't help but laugh. It felt good to laugh — really laugh.

"I was just thinking," he said between chuckles, "how much I'd hate to be the next skeleton that meets you!" Cynder gave him an almost reprimanding smile, which broadened and quivered, and then she, too, started laughing. Once they'd started, they couldn't stop: They just kept laughing and laughing until they cried.

All the grief, all the pain of the last few days…it felt as though it had all accumulated in some psychic vat, building pressure more and more until now…now they had turned the release valve.

It was a good thing that they weren't attacked, Spyro thought: They were so immobilized by laughter that they would've been easy targets.

Finally, they ran out of breath and sat in silence for a few moments.

"I guess we oughta get going," Spyro said, still giggling a little.

"Spyro?"

"Hmm?"

"Shouldn't you light that torch?"

"Oh yeah…" He did, and they returned to the door, where the eight dragon heads were now all spewing flames. The huge doors opened as they approached, revealing a short, dilapidated hallway full of broken bricks and stones. The center of the floor was covered in sand. They entered the dim corridor, and as they traversed it, the doors creaked and slammed shut behind them.

They stood still and listened: dead silence.

"No turning back now," Cynder said quietly. The moment sobered them up, and Spyro thought he could hear Malefor cackling in the back of his mind.

"Was there ever?" Spyro muttered, half to himself. The moment he said it, he thought it sounded tactless, but Cynder gave him a grimace of agreement, so he didn't say anything. A sepulchral solemnity hung in the air of this dank little hall.

It felt as though they were crossing the veil to a world from which there was no return.

"Well, no point waiting around," Cynder said grimly; they approached the opposite doors, identical to the ones through which they had just passed. "How do we open _these?_"

"Looks like there's a lever here," Spyro said, pointing to the side of the door, where a lever was indeed built into the wall.

Neither of them moved.

"Together?" Spyro muttered to her. She nodded.

"Yeah…" They approached the lever simultaneously, and together they pulled it down.

The doors creaked and opened; they stepped back out into the sunlight and saw…

…nothing.

It was just an empty courtyard — huge, but empty. On the far side was a wall, with two staircases rising up its flanks to a rampart flanked in turn by a pair of porticos, between which a disturbance in the air was visible: a cyclonic updraft piercing the swirling tower of dust and smoke that enveloped the tower that now loomed high above, so close it felt like they could touch it…

"It can't be this easy," Cynder said softly, narrowing her eyes and glaring around at the empty, mockingly sunny air as though expecting Malefor himself to materialize beneath her gaze. Spyro agreed, but no matter how long they stood and stared, nothing popped up.

"Well, like you said, there's no turning back now…" He took a few steps forward, and —

"Spyro!" Cynder shrieked; he felt her seize him by the scruff of the neck and yank him violently backward; the both of them tumbled back into the hallway as a huge boulder slammed into the earth where Spyro had been not seconds before.

They bounded to their paws, adrenaline pumping through their blood. A huge troll, toting another boulder, appeared atop one of the porticos on the opposite end of the courtyard, and three skeletons were making their way down the stairs.

"Thanks for the save," Spyro told Cynder breathlessly, eyes glued to the advancing warriors.

"Anytime," she answered, her attention equally fixed.

"I think this is it," Spyro added: the last battle before Malefor.

"Yeah…me too…"

"You take the right, I take the left?"

"Deal." As the skeletons reached the halfway point across the courtyard, Spyro and Cynder burst forward, veering each to one side as the troll hurled its boulder at them; the huge rock slammed into the ground as Spyro blew out the leftmost skeleton's knee with a bolt of ice. It collapsed, struggling to stand again, as Cynder vanished in a burst of shadows, reappearing beneath the rightmost skeleton, sending it flying high into the air and crashing back down near the stairs.

The second skeleton turned on her, raising its sword, but Spyro launched himself into the air, curled into a ball and encased himself in rock, coming rocketing back down on top of the skeleton, crushing it into the stone of the courtyard. Coming out of his rock shield, Spyro turned to see that the first skeleton was aiming a dark bolt at him, but before he could act, Cynder had doused its blade in acid and then decapitated it with a quick swipe of her tail. Spyro rounded on the third skeleton, just managing to reorient itself, and deluged it in flames.

The troll roared and hopped down from the rampart, landing between the staircases and roaring again, beating its chest furiously.

"Together?" Spyro asked Cynder with a smile as she came up abreast him.

"Together," she affirmed:

Together, they opened their mouths and launched twin bolts of Fury energy straight into the troll's face; the monstrous beast was flung back against the wall of the rampart, sheer force planting a crater in the stone and snapping the troll's spine with a resounding snap. It collapsed, dead.

The courtyard fell silent.

"C'mon…let's go before more show up," Spyro whispered; they swiftly scaled the steps and approached the mouth of the updraft.

Now that he stood before the door of destiny, Spyro couldn't help it: His whole life had led to this moment, and it all flashed before him now…

He saw himself and Sparx playing hide-and-seek in the swamp that fateful day; he saw Ignitus for the first time, the Temple for the first time; battling Cynder, saving Cynder; the night after that; Gaul, the Chronicler, the Well of Souls; reawakening after three years; Hunter, Avalar, Warfang; right up to the Burned Lands…seeing Ignitus for the last time.

That all felt like…like just three days.

The last three days felt like a lifetime…an eon.

And now here they stood, on the threshold of fate, he and Cynder together, bound by blood and tears and something far greater that he couldn't describe…

He could hear Malefor, almost as plain as day in the back of his head: _Yes…come to me, my young purple friend…_

_Don't worry_, Spyro promised him. _I'll be there…and it'll all be over_.

He glanced at Cynder, who stood right beside him, her green eyes fixed on the updraft: There was a haunted look in those emerald orbs.

"This is it," he said unnecessarily. Cynder swallowed.

"Yeah…"

"You ready?"

"No."

"Me neither."

Silence.

"Cynder," he began, feeling compelled by something deep inside him, "whatever happens…I'm sorry you got caught up in this…" She looked at him, surprised. "…and I'm gonna make sure that you get through this…if it kills me," he added in a low murmur. She stared at him.

"Y'know something Spyro," she said after a short moment, turning towards him, "I don't regret the way things turned out." He turned towards her, too, and she smiled. "I wouldn't have had it any other way." Spyro smiled, too.

"Y'know…I wouldn't've either."

They hugged.

That single embrace communicated more than an eternity of words.

"Together?" he asked when they split.

"Together."

And together, they turned, and together they stepped off the rampart into the updraft and soared into the howling dark.

After all, destiny awaited.


	5. Epilogue: conclusio atque apertio

**_IN UMBRĀ ARTIFICIS ĀTRĪ_**

"_conclūsiō atque apertiō_"

"An End and Also a Beginning"

* * *

TRĀNS OMNEM FĪNEM FĪNIS EST

QUAM ADMĪRĀBILE — LĪNEA CIRCULĀRIS EST!

RĒS IPSE LOQUITOR:

OCCIDĒNS EX ORIĒNTE ĒVENIT

ET ORIĒNS EX OCCIDĒNTE

IN DUAE RĒBUS SŌL CŌNSTAT

ISTA LŪX AETERNA EST

* * *

Ignitus smiled as he approached the huge, hovering book. _So…this wondrous volume contains the fates of dragons throughout all of time? Would've thought it would've been larger…_

He had an inward chuckle as he opened the monstrous tome of history; he could see that the Chronicler's books – my _books_, he corrected himself – did not obey the laws of physics: There were pages within pages, and pages that contained more information than a thousand pages — yet it was all perfectly legible to him.

Ignitus grinned more broadly as he flipped a page with all of the elegant casualness of one who had completed his role in the affairs of Earth and who now lived within the eternities between instants, the shadows within the blink of an eye.

"Well, young dragon," he mused, thinking of the young one who had endured and conquered so much, who had just saved the entire world, despite all possible odds being stacked against him, "where might you be?"

All of a sudden, the book answered him: The pages flew as if stirred by a sudden gust of wind, settling abruptly on a single, blank pair of pages; then, the pages blazed with golden light, which swelled and then receded, leaving in its wake a picture of two dragons, crudely forged into the parchment of the first page, one purple, one black, interconnected by a jagged green line and a beautifully curved red one.

Below the image was this paragraph:

_VŌBĪSCUM ERAT LŪX QUAE SALVAT_

_IN CORDIBUS VOSTRA ĀRSIT_

_CALŌREM SUUM ĒMĪSIT_

_TŌTUS MUNDUS HĀC LŪCE TINCTUS ERIT_

_ET CUM IN TENEBRĀS DĒSCENDISTIS_

_FLAMMĪS NIGRĪS DĒVORĀTĪ_

_NŌN TIMUISTIS, QUOD CŌGNŌVERĀTIS:_

_AB ALĪS FĀTĪ AMŌRISQUE_

_CUM GAUDIŌ VICTŌRIAE PĀCISQUE_

_POSTRĒMŌ EX TENEBRĪS_

_RESURRĒXERITIS_

Ignitus reread the words three times, always hovering over that last one:

"_Resurgētis_," he murmured to himself. As a scholar with centuries behind him, and as the new guardian of all time, he had no trouble translating the Latin:

"'You shall rise again,'" he whispered. Then his smile broadened a bit, and he chuckled to himself. "I figured as much…"

Then, on the right-hand page, there were only two lines, gleaming up at him in purest black ink:

AMOR MORTEM VINCIT

AMOR OMNIA VINCIT

Ignitus thought for a moment, and then he looked around for a pen; instantly, one materialized before him. He wrote into the book, with consummate care and grace, a translation:

LOVE CONQUERS DEATH

LOVE CONQUERS ALL

Ignitus smiled even more broadly than before.

"Indeed," he said quietly to no one in particular — but somehow he knew that that purple dragon – by whom he had done so much wrong, whom he had striven so hard to protect – could hear him…and already understood this powerful truth.

"Indeed," he repeated, "and that, young dragon…was the secret all along."

He closed the book, still smiling.

_—FĪNIS—_


	6. Latin Commentary

**LATIN COMMENTARY**

Okay, so I know that I used a lot of Latin in the story, and I didn't translate most of it because it would've been pretty awkward. But I figure that since I included it, I should at least translate it properly so that you can understand what it adds to the story.

"_in profundum_" ("Into the Abyss")

**CUM ADVENTŪ DĒLĒTŌRIS VENIENT ĪGNIS MORSQUE; CAELUM OBSCŪRĀBITUR, ET TŌTA TERRA CUM ĪGNE FERŌCE IŪSTITIAE IŪDICIĪQUE AMBŪRĒBITUR; ĪNFERĪ EX TENEBRĪS SEPULCRŌQUE ET AD TERRAM SURGENT ET ORBIS ILLŌRUM RELIQUŌRUM VĪVŌRUMQUE DĒVORĀBUNT.**

**SŌLUM ILLĪ QUĪ BENEDĪCTIŌNEM DĪVĪNAM POSSIDENT IŪDICIUM AB ĀLĪS FĀTĪ FUGIENT.**

**GLŌRIŌSĪ SUBLĪMĒSQUE AD ALTISSIMA CAELA ĒVOLĀBUNT…INVOLŪTĪ CUM PLŪMĪS PĀCIS GAUDIĪQUE.**

So, this basically translates as follows:

**With the coming of the destroyer there will come fire and death; the heavens will be darkened, and the whole earth will be consumed in the fierce fire of justice and of judgment; the dead* shall rise to earth from the shadows and the grave at shall devour the world of those still alive.**

[*: _ī__nfer__ī _literally means "inhabitants of the underworld." It's actually a substantive adjective.]

**Only those who possess the divine blessing shall escape judgment on the wings of fate.**

**Glorious and sublime* they shall fly to the highest heavens…enveloped in feathers of peace and joy.**

[*: In Latin, the word _subl__ī__mus_ literally meant "lofty" or "proud," but I've translated here as _sublime_ because that's where we derived the word.]

So, this paragraph acts kind of as a summarization of the entire process of the next couple chapters, beginning with the advent of judgment through the Destroyer, and ending with a sort of liberation through those "with the divine blessing" — _viz._, Spyro and Cynder. I kind of had the very last scene from the game in mind when I wrote the last verse there.

"_noctem tim__ē__re_" ("To Fear the Night")

**CUM NOX VENIT, UMBRAE CADĀVERŌSAE ĪNFERAEQUE EX ABYSSŌ ORBEM VĪVŌRUM INUNDĀBUNT. ILLĒS CORDĒS QUAE PERVĪVUNT CĀLĪGINEM PLŌRĀBUNT. NŪBĒS ATRŌCĒS EŌS INUMBRĀBUNT. TENEBRAE ADSURGENT.**

**ET OMNIA CORDĒS CŌGNŌSCENT**

**NOCTEM TIMĒRE**

Much shorter and simpler:

**When night falls, infernal* shadows shall flood the world of the living out of the abyss. Those souls who servive shall bewail** the darkness. Fiendish hordes shall engulf them. **

[*: There are actually two Latin words here: _cad__ā__ver__ō__sae_, "cadaverous," and _ī__nferae_, "hellish" ("belonging to the underworld"). **: The Latin word here is very, very strong, denoting intense agony.]

**Darkness will rise.**

**And all souls shall come to know**

**To fear the night.**

This paragraph mainly applies to the first half of the chapter: passing the night in the Burned Lands. It's pretty self-explanatory…

"_resurg__ēmus_" ("We Shall Rise Again")

This chapter has two parts to its Latin intro: The first part is selected verses from the Gregorian chant "_diēs īrae_" (Day of Wrath/Judgment Day), with a slight modification on a couple lines.

**DIĒS ĪRAE, DIĒS ILLA**

**SOLVET SAECLUM IN FAVĪLLA**

**QUANTUS TREMOR EST FUTŪRUS**

**QUANDŌ IŪDEX EST VENTŪRUS**

**MORS STUPĒBIT, ET NĀTŪRA,**

**CUM RESURGET CREĀTŪRA**

**IŪDICANTĪ RESPŌNSŪRA**

**LĪBER SCRĪPTUS PRŌFERĒTUR**

**IN QUŌ TŌTUM CONTINĒTUR**

**UNDE MUNDUS IŪDICĒTUR**

**IŪDEX ERGO CUM SEDĒBIT**

**QUIDQUID LATET, APPĀRĒBIT**

**NĪL INULTUM REMANĒBIT**

**LACRIMŌSA DIĒS ILLA**

**QUĀ RESURGENT EX FAVĪLLA**

***IŪDICĀNDA CORDĒS REA***

[_This line originally read: _iūdicāndus homō reus_. It was part of a couplet, so I eliminated the last line and altered it to merge with the preceding two lines to form a triplet._]

Translation's a little bit trickier here because I didn't write these myself, but…

**That day is a day of wrath**

**The era shall dissolve in ash**

**How much trembling there is to be**

**When the Judge is come**

**Death shall be struck dumb*, and nature too**

**When the creature rises again**

**To give answer to the Judge**

[*: The verb _stup__ē__re_ is an active verb with a passive meaning: "to be struck senseless [in awe or shock]," "to be silenced [in awe or shock]"]

**The written book shall be brought forward**

**In which all is contained**

**From which the world is to be judged***

[The actual verb for "to judge" does not conjugate the way shown above — perhaps it is an older form, or the form was altered to preserve the rhyme.]

**Therefore when the Judge sits**

**All that is hidden shall appear**

**Nothing shall remain unavenged*.**

[_inultus_ has a broader meaning of "unsatisfied," "unaddressed," "unresolved," but it universally deals with crimes that have not been redressed.]

**Doleful* will be that day**

**From which shall rise again out of the ashes**

**All souls in question to be judged****

[*: The word literally means "full of tears," from which we get the English _lachrymose_. **: _rea_ in justice parlance refers to the defendant and can also carry the idea of responsibility for an action or condemnation therefore.]

The second part of the passage is my own:

**SED…**

**NŌBĪSCUM EST LŪX QUAE SALVAT**

**IN CORDIBUS NOSTRA ĀRDET**

**CALŌREM SUUM ĒMITTET**

**TŌTUS MUNDUS HĀC LŪCE TINGĒTUR**

**ET CUM IN TENEBRĀS DĒSCENDIMUS**

**FLAMMĪS NIGRĪS DĒVORĀTĪ**

**NŌN TIMĒMUS, QUOD CŌGNŌVIMUS:**

**AB ALĪS FĀTĪ AMŌRISQUE**

**CUM GAUDIŌ VICTŌRIAE PĀCISQUE**

**POSTRĒMŌ EX TENEBRĪS**

**RESURGĒMUS**

It translates thus:

**But…**

**With us is the light which saves**

**In our hearts it burns**

**Sending out its heat***

[*The Latin is not participial.]

**The whole world* shall be soaked** in this light**

**And as we descend into darkness**

**Swallowed up by black*** flames**

[*: This word also refers to "mankind" (or, in our case, "dragonkind"). **: The word connotes that the substance that is soaking becomes imbued in the substance being soaked. ***: "Black" here also connotes "evil."]

**We fear not, for we know*:**

[*The word literally means "we have come to understand," implying epiphany.]

**On the wings of fate and love**

**With the joy of victory and of peace**

**At long last out of the shadows**

**We shall rise again**

So, this passage as a whole serves to reemphasize and bring to a climax the tension and solemnity of the moment and what is at stake, ending with a reversal in tone: a note of hope and even triumph, which essentially foreshadows the result of the coming battle.

"_concl__ū__si__ō__ atque aperti__ō_" ("An End and Also a Beginning"*)

[*: There is a pun here: _concl__ū__si__ō_ derives from the word for "to close," and _aperti__ō_ from the word for "to open." Hence it literally means "a closing and an opening." Moreover, the use of _atque_ emphasizes _aperti__ō_, indicating that, yes, an ending has come, but a new beginning, greater than the end, is coming after.]

I already translated the last couple lines in the chapter, so I'll just look at the intro paragraph and the paragraph Ignitus reads in the book:

**TRĀNS OMNEM FĪNEM FĪNIS EST**

**QUAM ADMĪRĀBILE — LĪNEA CIRCULĀRIS EST!**

**RĒS IPSE LOQUITOR:**

**OCCIDĒNS EX ORIĒNTE ĒVENIT**

**ET ORIĒNS EX OCCIDĒNTE**

**IN DUAE RĒBUS SŌL CŌNSTAT**

**ISTA LŪX AETERNA EST**

This translates thus:

**Beyond each end is a beginning***

**How exotic that a line should be circular!****

**The thing speaks for itself:**

**The sunset proceeds from the sunrise*****

**And the sunrise from the sunset**

**In both cases, the sun is unchanged******

**This very light is everlasting**

[*: This is a pun on _f__ī__nis_, which means both "end" and "starting point." The text literally reads, "Beyond each end is an end." **: Carrying over this idea, _f__ī__nis_ also means "dividing line," but each _f__ī__nis_ leads to another in a cyclical fashion; thus, a line that is circular. ***: Literally "west" and "east" respectively, carrying over the idea of cyclicality. ****: Or "stands firm."]

This seems pretty self-explanatory to me: Though the crisis has ended, a new era is behind it — a dawn follows the night.

Next:

**VŌBĪSCUM ERAT LŪX QUAE SALVAT**

**IN CORDIBUS VOSTRA ĀRSIT**

**CALŌREM SUUM ĒMĪSIT**

**TŌTUS MUNDUS HĀC LŪCE TINCTUS ERIT**

**ET CUM IN TENEBRĀS DĒSCENDISTIS**

**FLAMMĪS NIGRĪS DĒVORĀTĪ**

**NŌN TIMUISTIS, QUOD CŌGNŌVERĀTIS:**

**AB ALĪS FĀTĪ AMŌRISQUE**

**CUM GAUDIŌ VICTŌRIAE PĀCISQUE**

**POSTRĒMŌ EX TENEBRĪS**

**RESURRĒXERITIS**

Maybe you noticed, but this passage is simply an altered version of the one that appears at the second half of the Latin intro to "_resurg__ē__mus_":

**With you** was the light which saves**

**In your hearts it burned**

**Sending out its heat****

[*: The Latin _you _is plural throughout. **: Again, the Latin is not participial, though now we are in past tense, not present.]

**The whole world would be soaked in this light**

**And as you descended into darkness**

**Swallowed up by black* flames**

[*: Again, can mean "evil."]

**You were unafraid*, for you knew**:**

[*: Literally "you did not fear." **: Again, "you had come to understand."]

**On the wings of fate and love**

**With the joy of victory and of peace**

**At long last out of the shadows**

**You would rise again***

[*: I had Ignitus translate this as "you shall rise again" because outside the past tense context it sounds peculiar.]

So, that's it for the Latin! I hope this helps make the story even more enjoyable and insightful!


End file.
